India's foray into space started with sounding rockets supplied by NASA in the 1960s

India’s space program was not born out of Cold War rivalry but an obligation to serve the more immediate needs of a developing country

by Priyadarshi Dutta

On 21 November 1963, the sun set one minute before 6 pm at Trivandrum in Kerala. At 6:25 pm India’s first sounding rocket, of Nike-Apache variety, supplied by NASA, and carrying French payload, flared up in the skies from the nearby fishing village of Thumba. Amidst 600-acres of wilderness, stood a building of St Mary Magdalene Church, which on being acquired amicably and peacefully by the Trivandrum district collectorate, served as the office of Thumba Space Centre. Dr Homi Jehangir Bhabha, on watching the launching, had reportedly exclaimed, “The NASA which supplied $6,000 rocket not merely launched the rocket, but also launched our space program.”

The NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) of the United States played a catalytic role in India’s nascent space program. Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, a protégé of Vikram Sarabhai, recalls in his memoirs how he underwent six-month training at the Langley Research Centre (LRC) of NASA at Hampton, Virginia in 1963. As part of his training he went to Goddard Space Flight Centre (GSFC) at Greenbelt, Maryland that managed most of NASA’s earth-orbiting science and applications. He wrapped up his training program with his visit to Wallops Flight Facility at Wallops island, in Virginia.

It was at Wallops Flight Facility, which served as the base for NASA’s sounding rocket program, that Dr Kalam was startled to find a painting that underscored an Indian connection to rocketry. The painting prominently displayed at the reception lobby of the Facility, showed Tipu Sultan’s army battling the British in 1799 AD with an innovative weapon- the rockets (Wings of Fire, P.25). Later, Dr Kalam, found out that when Tipu Sultan was killed, the British captured more than 700 rockets and subsystems of 900 rockets in the battle of Turukhanahally in 1799, which were taken to England by William Congreve and subjected to what is called ‘reverse engineering’ today (Wings of Fire, P.27).

Dr Kalam’s statement that the development of Indian rockets in the twentieth century could be seen as revival of the eighteenth century dream of Tipu Sultan would be controversial today. Tipu Sultan, whatever might be his contribution towards sericulture or rocketry, has been exposed as an Islamic bigot, with atrocious policies towards the Hindus and Christian subjects are painfully recalled till today. While no doubt ancient India had many achievements in the field of science and mathematics, modern science is a product of modern minds. India’s nascent program was technologically aided by the USA, France and the USSR. These three countries were involved in development of the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launch Station (TERLS), as Dr Kalam informs (Wings of Fire, P.26).

The success of Chandrayaan-3 has taken India’s space exploration to a higher and altogether different orbit. India promises to emerge as a net exporter of knowledge in space research in the world in the ensuing decades. Some enthusiasts on social media are seeing ISRO as a challenger to NASA’s dominance in the field of space exploration. This is not merely premature, but betrays a lack of knowledge about the foundational aims and objects of India’s space program vis-à-vis America. The Space program in the US and USSR, like their nuclear program, was actuated by the vision of technological superiority and strategic dominance during the Cold War.

In 1955, both the USSR and the US had announced plans to orbit an Earth satellite to support the 1957-58 International Geophysical Year. When the Soviet launched the Sputnik on 4 October 1957, the event shocked the American public almost like ‘Second Pearl Harbour’. Soon on 3 November 1957, the USSR’s launch of Sputnik-2 delivered another psychological blow to America. The shock was complete when a month later on 6 December 1957, the first US satellite Vanguard exploded on launch. On 1 January 1958, the US was able to launch Explorer I, which was able to successfully transmit telemetric data for five months. Before the year was out, in December, 1958 the US launched Score, the first satellite to transmit radio broadcast, which was President Eisenhower’s Christmas message.

The advent of the 1960s saw increased rivalry between the American and Russians over “manned missions” — or human spaceflight. The USSR stole the thunder sending Yuri Gagarin into 1 hour 48-minute orbital flight on Vostok-1 piloted spacecraft on 12 April 1961. Gagarin’s spaceflight deeply impacted the US space policy. On 25 May 1961, a month after Gagarin’s spaceflight, US President John F Kennedy delivered his famous “Special Message – on Urgent Needs” to a joint session of the US Congress where he announced the US commitment to put the first man on the moon and returning him safely to earth before the decade was out. He also proposed accelerated development of Rover nuclear rockets for long-range exploration of space, possibly to the end of the solar system. While the US kept its date with the moon (in July, 1969), before the decade was out, Kennedy was not alive to rejoice in it. On 21 July 1961, US’ Freedom 7 spacecraft carrying Astronaut Alan Shepard was launched into space on Mercury Redstone 3 rocket. Shepard was recovered safely along with the space flight. A decade later Shepard became the fifth and till date the oldest man (at 47) to walk on moon.

Going to the moon somehow became a phrase to describe human spaceflights. It was not merely on account of the longest distance that human spaceflights have gone. It was possibly due to idioms like ‘asking for the moon’, ‘over the moon’. Frank Sinatra’s 1954 song “Fly Me to the Moon” had become a global hit. This was an ambition that the Indian space program scrupulously tried to avoid, both as unaffordable and unsuitable for a developing country.

In his talk on All India Radio (National Program of Talk series) on 12 August 1966 Vikram Sarabhai said: “In India the immediate goals of our space research are modest. We do not expect to send a man to moon or put elephants, white, pink or black, into orbit around earth. Our objective is to understand primarily the region of the atmosphere from forty to about two hundred kilometres above the surface where balloons will not reach and satellites cannot operate for any length of time because of the drag of the atmosphere. This region of the atmosphere which is studded with sounding rockets is crucial to understand the processes by which solar influences ultimately penetrate to the lower atmosphere where weather changes occur.”

“A most exciting prospect within our reach in the next few years,” Sarabhai added, “Is the establishment of what is known as a synchronous satellite over the Indian Ocean. It would keep constantly under observation the vast area of the Indian Ocean, which has yet very few observing posts from which we can derive information of great importance to meteorology and long range weather forecasting. An equally exciting development is a synchronous direct broadcast television satellite which would make available a most powerful means of mass communication to reach about two thousand million people in an economically depressed region of the world.”

The main areas of concern for India’s space program were meteorology, remote sensing and satellite tele-communication. Vikram Sarabhai, as Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission issued a decadal roadmap of Atomic Energy and Space Research on 22 July 1970, titled Atomic Energy and Space Research: A Profile for the Decade 1970-80. It was at a time when the launching station was being developed at Sriharikota, a barrier island of Bay of Bengal, in Tirupati district of Andhra Pradesh. According to this document the first Rohini Scientific Satellite (RS-1) was planned to be launched by mid-1974 using SLV-3 vehicle. The first successful launch, however, could be carried out on 18 July 1980. Dr Kalam recalls that the whole nation was excited as India made her entry into the small group of nations which possessed satellite launch capacity.

On 26 May 1999, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, while congratulating Indian space scientists for the launch of PSLV C-2 and putting three satellites into space said that India’s space program right from the start, was designed to help in solving the day-to-day problems of our citizens. The space program, he said, supported India’s developmental initiatives in the field of weather forecasting, broadcasting, telecommunications, map land and water resources, and increasing our understanding of various scientific phenomenon. Thus we do not notice any change in the foundational aims of India’s space program. However, Vajpayee himself was destined to bring that about.

It was the Chandrayaan-1 project, approved in 2003, which acted as the game changer. Space program became more tangible. Both Chandrayaan-1 (2008-09) and the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), popularly called Mangalyaan (2013) were daring mission but since none of them involved landing on the surface they did not trigger as much excitement and celebration as the Chandrayaan-3’s success recently. From 1963 to 2023- Indian Space Research has moved into a different orbit. The success of Chandrayaan-3 and scheduled launch of Aditya L-1 Mission (on 2 September 2023) as the country’s first observatory class space based solar mission has repositioned India into a great league of space clubs. India is also aiming at Gaganyaan (human space flight), on which the work got delayed due to the pandemic.

The tangible achievements like interplanetary missions and human spaceflight might be more “photogenic” and a source of pride besides extending the frontiers of scientific knowledge. However, one should not overlook the more understated benefits that space research has brought to a developing country over the last sixty years. To deny it would be sacrilegious.

Even in the 21st century India’s ascent in different sectors like road, highways, railways, healthcare and agriculture will be powered by space technology. ISRO might not be NASA, but neither was it meant to be.

The writer is author of the book The Microphone Men: How Orators Created a Modern India (2019) and an independent researcher based in New Delhi. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author