The Indian Space Research Organisation on Thursday successfully launched the dummy of the country’s GenNext launch vehicle, Geosynchronous Satellite launch Vehicle-Mark III (GSlV-Mark III), from Satish Dhavan Space Centre at Sriharikotta.
Though labelled as GSlV-Mark III, the vehicle launched on Thursday was a shell of the heavy-lift launch vehicle which is being developed by the ISRO for deploying heavy communication satellites weighing between four to five tonnes in the Geo Stationary Orbit (GSO), 36,000 km away from the earth.
The dummy vehicle had carried on-board a Crew Module Atmospheric Re-entry Experiment (CARE) weighing 3,775 kg and dropped the same from an altitude of 100 km to the earth. This was retrieved from a point 100 km away from Andaman and Nicobar island. The CARE is being projected as the model of the spacecraft which ISRO intends to use in its proposed manned mission to the space which may take another decade.
K Radhakrishnan, the ISRO chairman, described the mission as a significant landmark in the history of the country’s space programme. “The advanced launch vehicle and the unmanned crew module worked as per our plans and the results were in the expected lines,” he said from the Mission Control Room at the space centre.
But the GSlV launched on Thursday did not have the cryogenic engine to power the vehicle. This was disclosed by none other than S Somanath, project director, ISRO immediately after the launch of the vehicle. “We will be ready with the cryogenic engine in two years time,” said Somanath.
Top space scientists like G Madhavan Nair, former ISRO chairman, described the GSlV-Mark III launched on Thursday as a half-cooked vehicle. “This is neither GSlV nor Mark-III,” said Nair.
“If the vehicle is not powered by the cryogenic engine, how can it be labelled as a GSlVIJ” asked a senior ISRO space scientist from Vikram sarabhai Space centre, Thiruvananthapuram. . He said it is like developing the shell of a Ferrari car with no engine.
The ISRO is still dependent on the European Space Agency for launching its heavy communication satellites into the GSO. The GSAT 16 had to be taken to ESA early December because of the delay in perfecting the cryogenic engine. The failure to develop the cryogenic engine technology has upset many programmes like tele education and tele medicine which would have revolutionised the country’s health and education sectors. “No new tele medicine and tele education programmes has been launched during the last five years,” said the ISRO scientist based in Bangaluru.
Though the ISRO succeeded in launching a GSlV mission powered by an indigenously developed cryogenic engine in January 2014, the space agency has not replicated such missions afterwards. “There is a feeling among the scientific community that ISRO is not confident of sending another mission powered by an indigenously developed cryogenic engine. That is why they keep on changing the priorities,” said Nair.
He pointed out that the Crew Module Atmospheric Re-entry (CARE) vehicle, the payload in Thursday’s mission which was dropped from the launch vehicle and successfully retrieved from Bay of Bengal after 20 minutes of its deployment too serves no purpose. “The ISRO had a successful mission in 2007 by name Space Capsule Recovery experiment in which a space capsule was injected into the low earth orbit by a Polar satellite launch Vehicle. The SCR payload orbited the earth for one week and was brought back to the earth successfully. The spacecraft fell on Bay of Bengal and was retrieved by the Coast Guard,” said Nair.
