The Indian Space Programme

by Gurbir Singh

  Indian scientists still in training in the US heard the news of the successful launch at Thumba over the Wallops Flight Facility public address system. News of the President’s assassination was announced on the same system. One of the Indian engineers recalled “We were informed of the assassination of President Kennedy at Dallas. What struck us then, as most remarkable, was that the Wallops Range and NASA continued to work as usual and no holiday was declared.”[401]

  Gradually, the launch of sounding rockets at Thumba became a routine. Not all launches went according to plan. Some exploded on the launch pad. One travelled horizontally and skimmed the sea, temporarily becoming airborne again. Another headed inland, instead of out to the sea, and was recovered from near the Trivandrum Engineering College.

  Type of Rocket

  Total

  Dragon

  1

  Nike-Apache*

  36

  Centaure I

  10

  Centaure II-A

  2

  Judi-Dart*

  36

  Boosted Arcas I*

  6

  Skua I

  10

  Skua II (T)

  1

  Nike-Tomahawk*

  3

  Test Rocket (2.7’)

  29

  Rohini 75

  15

  Rohini 75 Test Rocket

  22

  Rohini two-stage

  1

  Menaka I

  13

  Rohini 100

  13

  Rohini 125

  2

  Fibreglass Rocket

  5

  Table 7‑1 The 205 Rockets Launched from Thumba between 21 November 1963 and 31 March 1970. Credit Ashok Maharajah. * US supplied.

  India had defined the term ‘non-aligned movement’ and chose to chart its own course between the US and USSR.[402] By selecting to remain neutral, India had selected to balance its trade, defence and scientific affiliations with both the West and the USSR. In this unique position, Thumba became a neutral place where individuals from different countries could meet. Scientists from nations where relationships were traditionally cold, if not hostile, could pursue friendly, apolitical and productive scientific relationships in Thumba under the UN auspices. Jacques Blamont, who was in attendance during the UN dedication ceremony, recalls that “COSPAR provided the only place in the world where such collaboration, motivated by the noble spirit of IGY could take place.”[403] Although COSPAR still exists, since the demise of the Cold War, the role it now serves is no longer as profound as it once was.

  Sarabhai’s scientific interest in cosmic rays and Thumba’s central research theme of investigating the EEJ were far removed from the primary objective of national economic development. E.V. Chitnis, who played a key role in initially selecting Thumba as the launch site and leading the operations there, wrote “on one side you had the technology, but at the same time, whatever you were doing must be relevant to the country’s needs. This was the basic idea of Sarabhai when he started the space programme.”[404] Sarabhai’s widow recalls “When Vikram started India’s space programme, he always spoke of using space for national development.”[405]

  One Village One Television: SITE

  Satellite television is a standard fixture in most middle-class family homes of the 21st century, but it was first made available to some of the most uneducated and poorest people on the planet in 1975. Although he did not live to see it, Vikram Sarabhai established the vision and much of the groundwork for the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) programme to beam educational TV programmes to communal television sets in rural Indian villages. The potential for television to entertain had long been established. Could it also be used for education? SITE epitomised Sarabhai’s vision of how the space programme and technologies could be exploited for the benefit of the ordinary people of India.

  By the 1960s, most developed and developing countries had installed a robust national infrastructure of TV studios for making programmes and a national network of transmitters for broadcasting them to the expanding domestic television market. The range of a television transmitter then was only around 40 km and by the late 1960s, India had just one. To cover the vast landmass of India, an overwhelmingly large number of transmitters would be required.

  A TV transmitter in the sky was the ideal solution to cover large swathes of the Indian population. Sarabhai also saw an opportunity for developing nations to leap ahead by skipping a network of land-based transmitters and going straight to broadcasting from satellites. Writing in 1971, almost five years before SITE became operational, Arthur C. Clarke, who had come up with the idea of communication satellites in his celebrated paper Extra-Terrestrial Relays in 1945, said “It can be difficult for those nations which have taken a century and a half to slog from the semaphore to satellite to appreciate that a few hundred pounds in orbit can now replace the continent-wide networks of microwave towers, coaxial cables and ground transmitters that have been constructed during the last generation.”[406] By chance, Arthur C. Clarke would participate in SITE because his home in Sri Lanka since 1956, fell inside the proposed footprint of the communication satellite.[407]

  Figure 7‑10 NASA’s Applications Technology Satellite (ATS-6). Credit NASA

  On 26 January 1967, India conducted one of the earliest trials on the value of delivering education via television to 80 villages around New Delhi. New Delhi was chosen because it was the only city in the country to have a TV transmitter at the time.[408] Known as the Krishi Darshan Programme, it was made in collaboration with All India Radio (AIR), Indian Agricultural Research Institute and the Delhi Administration. Sarabhai emphasised its importance as an investment, not overhead. Post-trial surveys concluded that an average of 400 individuals, mostly from farming communities, benefited from the programmes. Villagers would congregate around a single 30-cm television in open-air tele-clubs. The Sun sets around seven in the evening, and except during the monsoon season, the weather permitted open-air viewing throughout most of the year. The topics covered by the programmes included weed control, fertiliser, high-yield seeds and a few minutes of song and dance to “sweeten the education pill.”[409]

  Exploiting the same concept, in 1969, the British government established the Open University (OU) with the intention of delivering higher education using television broadcast as the primary method of communication. The principle of educating large dispersed audiences through television had been established. In India, millions of lives could be transformed by relatively basic education.

  SITE was ambitious. Its goal was to identify a potential solution to help end the cycle of illiteracy, malnutrition and disease caused by poverty. As Clarke put it “Illiteracy, ignorance and superstition are not merely the results of poverty, they are part of its cause.”[410] SITE would distribute adult educational training programmes for reading, writing, arithmetic, agricultural methods, hygiene and family planning. It included educational programmes for school children between the age of 5 and 12 during term time and teacher training programmes during holidays. The TV programmes were recorded in SITE studios in New Delhi, Cuttack and Bombay and delivered via magnetic tape to the Earth Stations at Ahmedabad and New Delhi for uplink to the orbiting satellite. Four hours of programmes (1.5 hours in the morning for school children and 2.5 hours in the evening for adults) were transmitted in two slots each day. Participating villages were supplied with modified televisions and a 3-m satellite dish.

  SITE delivered educational programmes for one year to around 5,000 villages in six separate states (Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Rajasthan), in initially four different languages (Hindi, Oriya, Teledu and Kannada) from a satellite parked 36,000 km above the Earth’s equator over Kenya in Africa. In addition to NASA and the Government of India, it was supported by various international agencies, such as the United Nations Development Plan (UNDP), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisati
on (UNESCO), United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and International Telecommunications Union (ITU). In the end, the impact of SITE was not restricted to raising literacy in rural India, but it demonstrated the potential of future satellite communication across the planet.

  SITE Infrastructure

  The satellite used for SITE was not Indian, but American. In the mid-60s, NASA initiated its Applications Technology Satellite (ATS) programme. The plan involved launching seven satellites targeting specific applications, although the last one was cancelled and only six were actually launched. This series of satellites would, in part, be the first implementation of Arthur C. Clarke’s idea of using satellites in geostationary orbit (GEO) to transmit television signals to Earth. ATS-6, originally designated ATS-F, was a large satellite with a huge 9-m communication dish with a new innovative three-axis stabilisation offering precision-pointing capability.[411]

  During a visit to NASA in December 1964, E.V. Chitnis signed a letter of understanding to participate in the ATS series.[412] Understanding India’s requirement for an Earth Station, Chitnis acquired funding from the UN to help build what is today the 14-m diameter Ahmedabad Earth Station (known initially as the Experimental Satellite Communication Earth Station). It was constructed in 87 days and was first tested with ATS-2 in August 1967.[413]

  In the first year of its operation following its launch on 30 May 1974, ATS-6 was scheduled to conduct experiments within the US. They included investigating three key areas: (i) conducting Health, Education and Telecommunication (HET) experiments using one-to-one low-cost widely dispersed terminals in the US, (ii) providing television re-transmit capabilities at seven of those one-to-one terminals and testing satellite communications for video seminars on continuing education and (iii) trial telemedicine for outpatient and joint consultation clinics over four remote regions of the US, Appalachia, Rocky Mountain states, Pacific Northwest and Alaska.[414] The medical institutions involved were located in urban cities, like Washington, and remote areas of Alaska, Montana and Idaho.

  The ultimate goal was to increase the flow of knowledge between practitioners and the University, broaden educational opportunities and facilitate the study of medicine by physicians and instructors in remote areas. During a three-week period between December 1974 and January 1975, when extreme weather cut-off Alaska from the outside world, ATS-3 and ATS-6 remained the only means of communication.

  Fortunately for Sarabhai and India, NASA’s objectives for the ATS series included field-testing the concept of broadcasting television programmes to terrestrial receivers via satellite. The orbital characteristics of ATS-6 had already defined a shortlist of three countries that were geographically convenient for field-testing, China, Brazil and India. A satellite transmitter at 36,000 km is a far more convenient solution for small villages dispersed over a large area. Brazil was not suitable because its population was mainly concentrated in a few large cities, which were conveniently served by traditional terrestrial transmitters. China was not suitable from a political perspective, and that left India.

  Figure 7‑11 Vikram Sarabhai and NASA Administrator Thomas O. Paine Signing the SITE Agreement. 18 September 1968. Credit NASA

  Engaging India also served the American objective to “channel Indian resources down the path of civilian technologies.”[415] The experience of Krishi Darshan and the 14-m steerable Earth Station built in Ahmedabad also helped India’s case. But there was a problem. The US had sought to set up radio transmitters in India to carry its national station Voice of America, but India had refused. To avoid the potential for another snub, the request had to come from India to the US, something that Sarabhai eagerly accepted.[416] By the late 1960s, the ATS project and the applications it could host had become much clearer. Three weeks before the Apollo 11 crew, Neil Armstrong (1930-2012), Buzz Aldrin (born 1930) and Michael Collins (born 1930), arrived in Bombay as part of their goodwill world tour, an agreement was formally signed on 18 September 1969 between NASA Administrator Dr Thomas O. Paine (1921–1992) and Vikram Sarabhai, representing the DAE and the Government of India. It was a remarkable deal. India got access for a year to an American satellite costing $180 million (Rs.135 crore) with a then projected reliability lifetime of two years and a mission goal of five years.

  ATS-6 was the largest and most powerful communication satellite at the time. NASA budget cuts announced on 27 July 1970 delayed the SITE programme from 1972 to 1974.[417] It was finally launched on 30 May 1974. The orbit insertion went better than planned and saved fuel allowing the original 2-year lifetime to be extended to the full 5-year mission goal. Modern satellite TV dishes are small, but it was not always like that. In 1975, before high-performance digital electronics, satellite TV dishes had to be big. From 36,000 km above the Earth’s equator, ATS-6’s large 9-m dish generated a footprint that covered the whole of India. A 3-m dish in the footprint could receive a TV signal. At that time, a 3-m dish could easily be constructed from chicken wire by unskilled labour. It brought the cost of reception equipment down from a few thousand dollars to a few hundred.

  According to the 1969 deal, NASA would loan ATS-6 to India for the SITE project for one year. India, however, needed an Earth Station, a large dish that could be used to send the TV programmes directly to the satellite in orbit for re-transmission back to Earth from its vantage point. A site near Pune was selected for a large steerable antenna. At the time, Indian companies had no experience of building such structures (the 14-m antenna in Ahmedabad was constructed largely with Western technologies and engineers), so the Indian government commissioned Canadian companies to build it. Sarabhai did not agree. According to Amrita Shah, Sarabhai’s biographer, his response served to highlight his passionate advocacy for Indian self-reliance “How will the Indians experiment if not in India?” In a rare outburst, he expressed his frustration with the overwhelming bureaucracy “It is all very well for me to hold forth and have a design and vision for India but it has to be translated to this rotten system of the Government of India and its bureaucracy.”[418] The government relented, and in October 1969, the Arvi Earth Station (later renamed Vikram Earth Station) opened ahead of schedule. The 29.5-m diameter parabolic reflector antenna was constructed almost entirely within India with the help of a Tata company, TELCO. In the process, India saved $800,000 (Rs. 600 crore) and raised the international profile of both Sarabhai and the Indian space programme.[419]

  Prior to SITE, ATS-6 was scheduled to participate in two other experiments. The first, immediately after launch, was designed to test ATS-6 as a communication satellite for remote communities in the US was limited to 121 terminals with a direct connection to ATS-6. A year later, the experiment in India was similar but on an altogether larger scale. ATS-6 was also assigned to participate in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project between 15 and 24 July 1975. Initially, ATS-6 was in geosynchronous orbit (GSO) at the equator directly overhead the city of Kansas in the US. In preparation for SITE on 20 May 1975, NASA engineers moved it halfway around the world from longitude 94° W to 35° E over Africa from where it had the required coverage over India.[420]

  Figure 7‑12 ATS-6 Footprint over India. Credit UNESCO

  The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project was the first joint manned space programme between the US and the USSR. The mission involved an Apollo spacecraft and a Soviet Spacecraft (Soyuz 19) docking in orbit 250 km above the Earth. The two commanders, Tom Stafford (born 1930) and Alexei Leonov (born 1934), shook hands in the hatch connecting the two spacecraft. It was widely seen as a formal end to the Space Race that had started with the launch of Sputnik in 1957. The ATS-6 satellite covered 130 of the 138 Apollo-Soyuz Earth orbits to relay telemetry, data, voice and TV between the Apollo-Soyuz spacecraft and the USSR and US.[421] This was the first time that an orbiting satellite was used as a relay between orbiting manned spacecraft. A few days after the end of this historic mission, ATS-6 was setup for the SITE programme, which commenced on 1 August 1975 and formally continued until 30 July 1976.<
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  Figure 7‑13 Chicken Wire Mesh Antenna and Television Used for SITE. Credit ISRO

  The ground segment of the SITE infrastructure included four Earth Stations, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Amritsar and Nagpur. The primary station in Ahmedabad with a 14-m antenna was used to transmit the television programmes prepared by the SITE studios in Bombay, Cuttack or New Delhi to ATS-6 at 6 GHz for ATS-6 to re-transmit back to Earth at 860 MHz, which could then be picked up directly by 2,000 villages with their 3-m receivers. A further 3,000 villages received the same signal via terrestrial re-transmission using the standard very high-frequency signal via TV masts.

  Each transmission carried two audio channels facilitating at least two major languages to cater for the diversity of languages among the participating Indian states. With additional microwave relays, the same signal was redistributed to many other villages. The 10-m antenna in New Delhi was responsible for uploading content from the nation’s capital, as well as for fulfilling the role of a backup for the primary station in Ahmedabad. The ground station located in Amritsar was not used for uplink (Earth to satellite transmission); it was used for reception (satellite to Earth) only. The Nagpur ground station was fitted with a unique communications beacon that transmitted a signal up to ATS-6 to help it to recover in the eventuality that it lost attitude control.[422] Many Indian homes today have multiple large high-definition flat-screen televisions in a single house. During the SITE programme, a single small communal cathode ray tube television, along with a 3-m dish, was typically available in one village for use by everyone. A custodian was charged with the responsibility of ensuring that the TV and the dish was available at the time of programme transmission. Groups larger than a typical cinema audience would participate. An audience of 1,000 viewing one television was common, but 4,000 was the highest reported. Local conditions (full moon, cultural rituals, festivals, harvest, weather and the time of year) determined the actual attendance.