NEWS
India’s ambitious space programme suffered a blow on December 25 when the geo-synchronous satellite launch vehicle (GSLV)-F06 rocket had to be destroyed 63 seconds after lift-off from Sriharikota, 100 km from Chennai. The GSLV-F06 had on board the GSAT-5P satellite that would have boosted the country’s television broadcast and telemedicine facilities. ISRO chairman K. Radhakrishnan briefed reporters, “I’m sorry to say that the GSLV-F06 mission has failed. The lift-off was normal. All the strap-on motors generated normal pressure before the solid core was ignited. The performance of the vehicle was normal up to 50 seconds. Soon the vehicle lost control and we had to detonate it at an altitude of eight kilometres.”

VIEWS
The December 25 fiasco at Sriharikota has dealt another blow to India’s space programme after backto-back failures of India’s largest rocket, the GSLV. An earlier April 15 launch this year had also resulted in a dismal disaster when the first ever attempt with the indigenously developed cryogenic engine failed immediately after commencement of ignition. The 167-foot-tall launcher lifted off majestically just after 4 p.m. from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on India’s eastern coast but what would have been an ideal Christmas gift to the nation turned into an embarrassing spectacle when close to one minute into ascent the launch vehicle started to wobble and tilt dangerously to one side, veering off the intended flight path and breaking up in a huge fireball. The flight control team had no other recourse but to press the ‘self-destruct’ button to at least ensure that none of the debris fell anywhere except in the safe waters of the Bay of Bengal.

While the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) would be in the process of constituting a Failure Analysis Committee (FAC) to go into the exact causes that led to the failure of the rocket and make recommendations for preventing their recurrences in the forthcoming missions, the reports emanating from the statistical study of the initial data suggests that, the connectors that take control commands from the on-board computers, did not reach the electronic actuation stage. The signals are transmitted from the flight control system in the equipment bay to various propulsion stages to control the rocket. In this flight, the data shows that the signal link got snapped to the nozzle actuator of one of the four strap-on liquid booster motors used in conjunction with the main solid-fuel first-stage rocket booster.

If this snag does turn out to be the real culprit after the FAC has gone through its fact finding enquiry and deliberations then—notwithstanding the national red face and the huge cost of the failed mission—the good news would be that the problem could comparatively be resolved more easily as it would be outside the purview of the much more complex issues such as propulsion, stage-separation, etc. On the other hand, does such a simple malfunction which nonetheless has caused irretrievable loss to the exchequer and the national pride point to certain laxity in production and lack of quality control in the production cycle? While it is fervently hoped that it wont be the case, it is equally important that the issue be examined closely and remedial measures initiated, if required. It may be remembered that compared to the PSLV launches which has been a huge success story, ISRO’s record of GSLV launches—with four failures and one partial and just two complete successes—has been anything but rosy.