|
|
| World Home » Science & Technology » | Sun. Oct 12, 2008 |
 |
|
|
||||||
|
India crosses new frontiers in space MIL/Agencies, Jan 25, 2007. New Delhi, January 25, 2007 - India's space initiatives recently took a big step forward. The achievements were somewhat overshadowed by Beijing's confirmation that it had successfully shot down one of its own satellites with a missile, launching itself into a select club that comprised US and Russia until now and sparking talk about an arms race in space. India's non-military efforts in space took a leap with the recent launch of the 44.4-meter-tall, four-stage Polar Satellite Launch This success more than made up for the failure of the Geo-Synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) last July 10 designed to launch heavy payloads. The GSLV burst into flames and set back India's quest to garner a portion of the US$2 billion satellite-launch market. India's space agency, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), unlike most other government-managed programs, has an otherwise impeccable record of progress, despite international sanctions that have required that it depend largely on domestic technology. Of particular interest this time was the study of technologies connected with the reusable launch vehicle (RLV) via the 550-kilogram space-capsule recovery experiment (SRE), which has the potential to attract more countries to launch their satellites from India because of lower costs. The RLV was successfully recovered (re-entering the Earth's atmosphere and landing on Earth) this week, after remaining in space for 11 days. Space agency Chairman G Madhavan Nair termed as "fantastic" the splashdown of satellite SRE-I into the waters of the Bay of Bengal. He called it "a technological breakthrough as far as the country is concerned". He said the recovery was a "big boost" to India mastering re-entry and recoverable technologies and building a reusable launch vehicle. Nair said, "This is a humble step towards sending an Indian into space. "Sending a satellite into space is comparatively easy as the difficulties are known. Everything was unknown in bringing back a satellite from orbit. The satellite had a speed of 28,000km/h. We had to brake its orbit. We had to steer it. Its orbit-raising took place over the Pacific Ocean, then it traveled over the Pole, and then it passed Lucknow and Sriharikota. Its navigation, guidance, control and above all the thermal management for its re-entry had to work.'' Unlike traditional rockets, which can be used only once, the recovery launch vehicle, as the name implies, can be launched a number of times, thus cutting launch costs by a good margin. Currently it costs between $12,000 and $15,000 to place a kilogram of payload in orbit. Once the RLV is operational, this figure could decrease substantially.
|
 |
|
Applelounge Network (Website Design India, Web Design India) Sites |