India achieves milestone: a big cryogenic engine is tested

Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) on Tuesday created a quiet bang that would soon propel India into a bigger league of nations launching satellites weighing up to five tonnes. 

In a silent operation at the Mahendragiri test facility, Isro successfully test-fired the indigenous cryogenic engine CE-20 for 645 seconds. This marks a milestone in the country's effort to develop a big cryogenic engine to fly the ambitious GSLV-Mark III by the end of 2016. 

In the absence of a proven indigenous cryogenic engine, India has been dependent on foreign space agencies like Arianne for the launch of heavy communication satellites. India's ambitious manned space programme also rests on the shoulders of GSLV-Mark III. 

A senior space scientist told that the 645-second test is a big boost since shorter duration tests did not put the engine to a complete resilience test. "This means that we will be ready for a stage test (after integrating the engine with the upper stage) in six months. If everything goes right, we should be able to fly a GSLV-Mark III by the end of next year," said the scientist. 

But there are challenges. "Soon we will have to do a high altitude test, simulating low pressure atmosphere on ground to see how the engine behaves," said the scientist. Cryogenic technology has remained a challenge for all space-faring nations because of its complexity. A cryogenic engine uses Hydrogen as fuel, stored at minus 253 degrees Celsius and liquid oxygen as oxidizer at minus 183 degrees Celsius. 

So far India's GSLVs were being powered by cryogenic engines given by Russia. Of the seven such engines, Isro has used up six. India's first attempt with an indigenous cryogenic engine was a failure. The second flight was a success, but that engine had a much lower thrust, about seven tonnes. 

"CE-20 will be our trump card," said an engineer associated with India's programme for more than 20 years. "If we can fly GSLV-MIII by next year, we will not just be self-sufficient, but also be able to rake in big monies by doing commercial launches for other countries." 

Mission to Mars Launched

A day after the last of Diwali rockets was fired in this part of the country, "the big one" blasted off from the first launch pad in Sriharikota on Tuesday afternoon, firing the ambition of a nation, and the imagination of many others. About 45 minutes later, whenPSLV-C25 had injected the Mars orbiter spacecraft into an Earth orbit, the first phase of India's first Mars mission was pronounced a success. 

"I am happy to announce that the Mars orbiter mission first phase is a success," said Indian Space Research Organization chairman K Radhakrishnan. About 90 minutes after a drizzle raised minor concerns about weather among lay people, the 44.4m PSLV-C25 carrying in its head India's first Mars orbiter, lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at 2.38pm. 

Drowning the cheers at the mission control, about 7km away, and the nearby media centre, the rocket rose to the sky with a roar, spewing fire and smoke. Soon it disappeared into the clouds, only to re-emerge after a few second to another round of applause.

The nail-biting — albiet expected — phase came soon after the third stage of the rocket burned out, and the blip on the tracking screens disappeared. As Isro chairman K Radhakrishnan had explained earlier, the rocket would be on a coasting phase for almost 25 minutes, 10 minutes of which was a "total blind phase." The mission control witnessed some silent moments during this period. And, when mission director P Kunhikrishnan reported that the first of the two ships in the south Pacific Ocean had tracked the rocket, the scientists' faces lit up.

 

'Bigger challenges ahead' 

About 35 minutes into the flight, the rocket was cruising at an altitude "slightly higher than the expected trajectory," as a scientist put it. "But it will self-correct its course," he assured. And correct it did, after the fourth-stage engine fired on its own, bringing the rocket back to life. Soon, the orbiter was injected into an elliptical Earth orbit in what Kunhikrishnan called a "precision exercise." What follows in the next 10 days would be six crucial "orbit raising operations," in the wee hours of November 6, 7, 8, 9, 11 and 16. 

And then, at 12.42am on December 1, the orbiter will leave the earth's orbit for a 300-day journeyto the red planet. "It's only the beginning; bigger challenges are ahead," said the Isro chairman. "We expect the orbiter to be in Mar's orbit on September 24, 2014."

 Before India, five nations have launched Mars missions. So, is India trying to be an also-ran? Why is India trying to boldly go where many have gone before? The answers lie in India's rightful ambitions to remain in the select league of space-faring nations, mankind's unending quest for the unknown, and a bit of business.

When uncertainty fuels curiosity

Just because the previous Mars missions did not find anything conclusive about methane or water or other indicators of life doesn't mean that the Indian mission may not find any. Critics had put forth a similar argument when India was preparing for Chandrayaan-1, but the moon mission found something even men who walked on moon could not: moisture in the polar region of moon.

The same logic works here. If the Indian mission finds methane or new patterns of deuterium that suggest early presence of water, it would change the way earthlings see Mars and other planets. "Some say why spend Rs 460 crore on this mission. Such simple economics don't work here. You never know if we may find something that's worth much more than that figure," says Isro chairman K Radhakrishnan.

Uncertainty, as much as curiosity, has been at the core of every scientific exploration. Isro satellites programme director Mylswamy Annadurai calls the Mars orbiter mission a logical progression of the moon mission. "We are relaxed and confident, but then anxiety is a human trait. People who ask what we are going to fi nd would understand that not finding something is also a fi nding, a discovery that something is not there," he said.

Previous missions and groundbased calculations have found methane in Martian atmosphere, but none have been able to conclude if they definitely indicated early life. This is because methane could be of geological as well as biological origin. Whatever the source, finding methane — which one of the five scientific instruments on board the Mars orbiter would try — would add considerably to research on the red planet. The Lyman alpha photometer, meanwhile, would be looking for abundance of deuterium and hydrogen in the Martian upper atmosphere, which are indicators of early possible existence of water.

A point to prove

Will the Mars mission do all this? Nobody knows for sure. The Isro chairman is not apologetic when he says this mission is 85% a technology demonstration and the rest scientific quest. This means that India has to demonstrate — however late it is — its interplanetary mission capabilities to retain its place in the spacefarers' club.

"This is our first step in the field," says Radhakrishnan. "We have to take this step before bigger steps." He adds that only 21 of the 51 missions by the US and Russia/USSR have been successful. "That speaks of how complex the mission is. Getting the orbiter to go around the Mars itself would be a mark of success." Isro is confident of remaining in Mars orbit for about five months.

Money matters

Such missions boost Isro's capabilities and credibility so much so that more nations turn to India for their space missions and collaborations. A successful — or even attempted — Mars mission will boost Isro's image, and Antrix Corporation, the commercial arm of Isro, can well be a money-spinner.

India's Mars mission is a major step forward in exploring the solar system that was completed by Indian scientists in just 15 months, said the euphoric scientific community Tuesday.

India is the first Asian country and the fourth entity after Russia, the US and the European Space Agency (ESA) to leap into interplanetary space with an exploratory mission to Mars, about 400 million km from planet Earth.

Amitabha Ghosh, chairman, Science Operations Working Group - Mission Operations at the NASA Mars Exploration Rover Mission, said it's a significant milestone for India.

"It is important to develop capability and also try to do something unique and not something done before. The real moment for India will come when it enters into Mars gravitation," Ghosh said.

Renowned space scientist K. Kasturirangan commended the way Indian scientists were able to complete the mission within 15 months of the announcement by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

"I think first of all given the 15 months' time to take the mission to first level is something unbelievable for space programme of this level... something we all should be proud of," Kasturirangan said.

"It will become an important milestone for India when it completes 300 days and enters Mars orbit," Kasturirangan said.

Mission director P. Kunhikrishnan said: "With the precise injection of the spacecraft in the desired initial orbit, the crucial part of the mission for its long journey to Mars has been achieved. It is the 25th mission of the PSLV rocket."

Professor Yashpal, founding father of ISRO, lauded India's effort to chart its own path by launching the mission and not following others.

"There are a whole lot of programmes going on in the ISRO and the best part is that you are making your own path and not following anyone else's," he said.

Professor U.R. Rao, who had conducted the feasibility study of the Mars mission, said: "It is indeed a great day for India as something that has gone out of our own cradle. I can proudly say India has become mature. I hope we get very good results."

"I was talking to some scientist friends in the US and they told me why Indians are shouting about Rs.500 crore spent on the mission, it is the biggest day for the whole of India."

"Indians can be proud after spending Rs.5,000 crore on Diwali firecrackers, which don't go beyond 10 metres and with Rs.500 crore, we are going to Mars," said Rao, former ISRO chairman.

The spacecraft will enter the Martian orbit in September 2014.

Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre director S. Ramakrishnan said: "It is a historic mission. The PSLV has again proved to be a reliable rocket with a text-book launch, which is the first step."

Mission's authorisation board member M. Chandradatan said: "It is an excellent mission, with the team work of all ISRO centres as it had a very complicated design. We have achieved the first important step in the long mission and getting into the Earth's orbit."

Former Space Commission member Roddam Narasimha from Sriharikota told IANS: "It is a distinct forward step and India is working towards a new horizon in exploring the solar system. We have only seen the first phase of the project and have to wait for over nine months to watch from Earth before the spacecraft reaches the Martian orbit."

In the press conference that followed soon after the Mars orbiter launch, a foreign journalist asked what has now become a routine question: why should India send a mission to Mars when millions are in poverty? Isro chairman K Radhakrishnan told him about the benefits of the space programme, but the journalist persevered. Benefits of the space programme are evident, but not so much the benefits of going to Mars, especially for the poor.

Radhakrishnan then talked about how not going to Mars will make Isro rapidly out-of-date with technology. It is not clear whether all the hundreds of journalists assembled at Sriharikota were entirely satisfied.

The Mars mission is not an isolated mission for the organisation. Isro, or any organisation worth its salt, never plans isolated missions. Every programme feeds into another programme, and technology developed for one mission is used for another. This happens so frequently that it rarely makes sense to focus on individual missions and question their validity. Space technology is as inclusive as any other. The Mars mission will feed into subsequent missions of Isro. For engineers, this fact is as obvious as daylight. However, there are subtleties that are not so obvious to the public, and they need to be stressed.

With the launch of the Mars orbiter, Isro has taken a few step-ups on the complexity ladder of space technology. Learning to handle a complex mission has its spin-offs in every area of life and business.

Isro has yet to master the geostationary launch vehicle and its difficulties, a task that could take several years or even a decade, but it has also to look ahead after the GSLV. Going to the moon or planets bring on a new set of challenges, and the development of a new set of technologies. An organisation that does not develop them will soon fall behind in space technology, no matter how good it becomes on sending satellites into earth orbit.

Even without a geostationary launcher, a class of vehicles all other countries use to send satellites to Mars, this mission was no less complex for Isro than it was for other countries. It is not a trivial fact that two-thirds of all Mars missions have failed. Using a smaller rocket, even when as well-tested like the PSLV, does not make the mission any less sophisticated.

In fact, it has probably made it more complex, as Isro also made it in quick time with very little money. The low energy budget introduced new complexities. The changing weather gave it another dimension.

Alarge vehicle and its satellite together use every kind of technology imaginable. It needs the right configuration of the vehicle. The PSLV is now a mature design, but consistent manufacturing is always a challenge. So is testing. More than anything else, integration is different and difficult for each mission. A small error, only a millimetre's difference in the size of a device, will lead to failure. There is some learning with each new project.

Finally, there is science to reckon with. Isro's mission is primarily a scientific mission. Mars is one of the hottest topics, if not the hottest, in astronomy today. Understanding Mars is key to understanding the Earth, its past and future. Mars may once have had life. Its conditions four billion years ago were good for life. In fact, it may even have seeded the Earth with life. Understanding all this is necessary to design the future Earth. We may one day need to even leave the Earth and live on Mars.

Science does not belong to the rich countries alone. When investing in science, it is hard to pick and choose topics according to utility. No one knows what will be useful.

India, being a large country with a large scientific infrastructure, has an obligation to invest in space science. This is particularly so because Isro's budget is frugal. The entire world can learn from India when it comes to low-cost space engineering. The Mars mission is a drop in the ocean when the total budget of the country is considered. Space has to move on.

Likening India's Mars probe to putting 'a golf ball from Tokyo in a hole in Paris', Chinese experts have termed Manglaayan's launch as "a great achievement" which if successful could make India the first Asian country to achieve this fete.

Indian launch should be interpreted rationally as "a great achievement" of India that also deserves applause from the rest of the world,Ye Hailin, an expert on South Asian studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciencessaid.

"Like the Chinese, Indian people have their space dreams as well. The Mars orbiter, if successful, will increase the human race's store of knowledge and change our life," Ye told state-run China Daily.

Official dailies here front-paged the successful launch of the India's Mars mission, focussing on India taking the lead inMars exploration over China.

Ye also said China and India may work together to explore space instead of being engaged in what was called "aerospace competition".

In his reaction yesterday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said thee outer space is "the common heritage of mankind" and the international community should cooperate to maintain the permanent peace and sustainable development of outer space.

Pang Zhihao, a researcher with the China Academy of Space Technology, said ultimate outcome of the current Indian venture remains to be seen, as the successful launch was only the start of a year-long mission.

"The difficulty of getting the orbiter into orbit around Mars is equal to hitting a golf ball from Tokyo into a hole in Paris," Pang said adding that China is ready to conduct its own exploration of Mars in the near future.

"The carrier rocket Long March 5, with its 25 metric tons of low-Earth orbit carrying capacity and 14 tonnes of geostationary transfer orbit carrying capacity, can fully sustain our own Mars exploration projects," he said.

Jiao Weixin, a professor at the School of Earth and Space Sciences at Peking Universitytold the daily that "with the mission launched within a very short period, India eyes the political influence hereby brought and intends to be the first one in Asia that orbits Mars."

The Indian Space Research Organization (Isro) on Saturday performed the last of the five orbit-raising manoeuvre on its Mars Orbiter in the early hours, raising the apogee (farthest point from Earth) of the spacecraft to over 1.92 lakh km.

"The fifth orbit-raising manoeuvre of Mars Orbiter Spacecraft, starting at 01:27am (IST).. with a burn time of 243.5 seconds has been successfully completed. The observed change in apogee is from 1,18,642 km to 1,92,874 km," Isrosaid.

In the series of five orbit-raising manoeuvre with a supplementary operation after the fourth one, the space agency had raised the apogee of the spacecraft to over 1.92 lakh km.

After the successful completion of these operations, the Mars Orbiter Mission is expected to take on the "crucial event" of the trans-Mars injection around 12.42am on December 1. It will reach the orbit of the red planet by September 24, 2014 after taking on a voyage of over 10 months.

Isro's PSLV-C25 successfully injected the 1,350-kg 'Mangalyaan' Orbiter (Mars craft) into the orbit around the earth some 44 minutes after a text book launch at 2.38pm from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota on November 5, marking the successful completion of the first stage of the Rs 450 crore mission.

Space business & India

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) deserves much credit for elevating the public’s interest in space research to a level comparable to that in cricket and the economy.

The space business is dominated by the US, Russia and Europe, and India, like China, hopes to get a piece of the launch business. The supply of high resolution images in various bands (remote sensing) is another traditional commercial expectation. In both areas, ISRO has a solid record and the successful launch of Chandrayaan-I has lifted ISRO’s brand image to a higher level.

Competition for launches as well as remote sensing is heating up. Private entities with respectable launch capabilities have sprung up in Russia and the US. SpaceX, a California-based company, offers simple pricing and even a user’s manual. Apparently, a rocket launch can become as simple as buying, say, an oscilloscope.

What may be lost in the glare of the launches and the rich and fine tapestry of remote sensing is the holistic accomplishment of ISRO and related agencies in the use of space technology for societal needs. Remote sensing has doubled the precision of pin-pointing groundwater tables (wells), enabled monitoring of farm and natural resources and increased yields for fishermen. Communications satellites have linked doctors, consulting rooms and operating theatres across the country and have provided bandwidth for education, research and farmers.

It is this integrated package (including the construction of inexpensive radio telescopes) that may constitute a new market for which India is well positioned. Creating this integrated market for remote sensing and inexpensive satellitebased communications will necessarily involve a determination and major effort on the part of the Indian government.

The space business can not only be good business but also help India project its “soft power”. In a world racked by climate change (and associated bouts of food shortages and fuel deficits), this sort of soft power will be far more attractive than projections of military power or even simple-minded economic power.

In contrast, the West’s scientific satellites have become increasingly large and prohibitively expensive. The satellites frequently take a decade to build and run the danger of becoming obsolete in terms of technology by the time they are launched! An opportunity exists for India to promote space-based research based on frequent access to the heavens and the use of small satellites.

Again, India can simultaneously promote global science as well as project its soft power by designating itself as the centre for small satellites. I do not think it is essential for India to pay for these projects. Merely signalling its readiness to become a leader will elicit strong responses from smaller countries. Indeed, Chandrayaan-I is an example of this approach: six of the 11 instruments were built by other countries (including Bulgaria and Sweden).

The future for India in the space business and space science is quite bright. India can blaze a successful and a distinct trail by building on her strengths and being aware of her financial limitations.

Moon dust & hard business

It was up and away in a plume of fire almost before the human eye could capture it.
When Chandrayaan-1 sends a probe crashing into the moon’s surface at 1 km per second, it will raise not only a cloud of dust for scientific study but also the pride of Indians (the tricolour has been painted on the probe). Critics say that satisfying the Indian pride is the mission’s main objective and consider the Rs 386-crore bill a waste since the moon has been well researched by the major powers and has not thrown up anything interesting.

ISRO disagrees, and says the missions of the US and Russia (then the USSR) focussed on the moon’s equatorial region while its own payload is equipped for a total mapping. “Our payload is unique… It is more comprehensive for the total mapping of the moon,’’ says G. Madhavan Nair, chairman, ISRO, adding: “ISRO is the only space agency in the world, which has made use of technology to improve the life of the common man.”

He cites a study that quantified the benefits of the space programme as 1.5 times the spending of $2 billion so far. “In our budget of less than $1 billion (ISRO’s budget for 2008-09 is Rs 4,074 crore; NASA’s budget is $20 billion or Rs 98,000 crore), 80 per cent is being used to benefit the common man,’’ he says, referring to remote sensing, telemedicine and tele-education.

So, was Chandrayaan-1 about expanding scientific knowledge of the moon or upgrading ISRO’s technological capabilities? Both; while the first is a shot in the unknown, the second has concrete benefits—as seen from the steep trajectory of income and profits reported by ISRO’s business arm, Antrix Corporation. Nair is Chairman of Antrix, too.

Even before Chandrayaan’s launch, while India and the world were worrying over the global financial meltdown, Antrix had crossed a milestone unnoticed and unheralded. It delivered a communications satellite, the W2M, to the Paris-based Eutelstat, a leading telecom operator, on October 18.

Although the W2M satellite—unlike the home-grown Chandrayaan-1—was conceived and built in association with EADS Astrium, the European satellite major, it was the first complete commercial satellite built by ISRO for a foreign client. Antrix is tight-lipped about the size of the deal or its share, but insiders said the contract was worth about Rs 350 crore, or close to Chandrayaan’s cost.

As the W2M was shipped, K.R. Sridhara Murthi, Antrix’s Managing Director, had told Business Today: “Today is a great day for us. For the first time, India has shipped a commercial satellite for export.”

The outside world had little clue about W2M, but Antrix does not mind. It is now putting together another satellite, Hylas, for a UKbased client, even as ISRO works on Chandrayaan-2. “Work on Chandrayaan-2 will start soon… It will contain an orbiter, a lander to soft-land in the moon and a rover to pick up samples and analyse them,” says Nair, adding: “Mars is our next challenge.”

On the edge
ISRO’s edge so far has been its ability to offer the cheapest platform for launching “light” satellites, even as it faces tough competition from global players in all its segments—satellite building and launching, and offering transponders on its satellites.

“We are not operating in isolation. We have adopted the cooperate-and-compete approach... that is how we have to do business and survive,’’ says Murthi. Antrix is not ready to spell out its rates vis-a-vis those of the competition, but Murthi says: “We can be 30 per cent cheaper if we can have an end-to-end value addition—from design to delivery of service.” And that has not happened yet.

Antrix is not the only one reaping gains. India’s private sector has latched on to the subcontracts from the space programme. The domestic industry, apart from meeting 30-35 per cent of ISRO’s orders for components and services, also gets orders from Antrix worth 20-30 per cent of its annual revenue, which is expected to be Rs 940crore in 2008-09. For example, the Rs 100-crore deep-space network built by the public sector Electronics Corporation of India (ECIL) on Bangalore’s outskirts, had components built by many others, including private sector Indian companies.

Apart from majors like ECIL or Godrej, ISRO’s activities have helped scores of medium-scale industries like Avasarala Technologies in Bangalore and Astra Microwave Products and MTAR, both in Hyderabad. “Over the last two years, we have got orders worth Rs 25 crore each from ISRO, and I think the orders are only going to rise in the coming years,” says B. Malla Reddy, MD & CEO of the listed Astra, which supplies transmit/ receive (TR) modules for remote sensing satellites, automatic weather stations and C-band and Ku-band receivers.

Avasarala, which supplies heat pipes for payload structural panels, is moving up the value chain. “We are thinking of migrating into total assembly of structural panels,” says T.T. Mani, MD & CEO of Avasarala, which hopes to end the year with revenues of Rs 200 crore, up Rs 48 crore over last year’s figure.

Growth trajectory
Antrix reported revenues of Rs 940 crore and a profit after tax of Rs 168 crore in 2007-08, an increase of 41 per cent and 60 per cent, respectively, on the corresponding figures for the previous year. “Antrix is an amazing success story. It was started with equity of just Rs 1 crore in 1994, and you can see where it is now,” says S.V. Ranganath, Special Secretary (Finance), in the Department of Space.

U. Sankar, author of The Economics of India’s Space Programme, notes that ISRO’s market opportunities lie in, among others, the launch of small satellites in polar orbits. “Its unit launch cost is lower because of its learning-bydoing approach, lower cost of technical manpower and lower risk,” says the honorary professor at the Madras School of Economics.

S.R. Kulkarni, Professor of Astronomy & Planetary Sciences at Caltech, says the future of the space business and space science is quite bright. “India need not travel the same path as the pioneers or the new entrants, but can blaze a distinct trail by building on her strengths,”’ he says.As for Chandrayaan itself, the possibilities for commercial gains are quite distant. “Right now, it will be premature to talk of the commercial spin-offs from Chandrayaan-1. But at a later stage we will think of possible launch opportunities for any private initiatives for moon probes and lunar missions. Like, for instance, small satellites, which will be launched either through private enterprises or through space agencies,’’ says Murthi.

Escape velocity
ISRO has more immediate challenges on hand than a manned space mission or a Mars landing. It is in establishing itself as a significant player in the multi-billion dollar commercial satellite launch business. With the PSLV, ISRO has become a reliable low-cost player and can launch 1,600 kg satellites into their intended orbits. Chandrayaan-1 was the 13th consecutive successful launch of a PSLV—the workhorse has so far carried aloft 30 satellites, including 16 foreign ones.

But the same cannot be said about the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle, which can carry heavier and costlier telecommunications satellites. The GSLV’s record has been patchy, because India is yet to develop the required expertise in cryogenic rocket engines.

“We are not ready for that yet. We have the capability to launch I2K-class spacecraft (weighing about 2,000 kg) only. When we develop GSLV Mark 3, we can offer (launch) services for satellites weighing around 4,000 kg,” explains Murthi of Antrix.

ISRO hopes to perfect the GSLV by 2010, as it has made some advances with the cryogenic rocket engine technology. The cryogenic engine in a GSLV’s upper (third) stage gives it the required injection velocity. The GSLV launches so far have used the seven engines supplied by Russia since 1996. But Russia stopped supplies following US pressure over the supply of this dual-use technology. Cryogenic enbtgines are hard to build, and India has just started making some progress after its initial failures.

“The cryogenic engine is fully qualified. We have completed long duration tests on the ground... A GSLV with indigenous cryogenic engine will blast off some time next year,’’ says Nair.

The GSLV will give ISRO the escape velocity needed to enter the business of launching heavy satellites with its clear cost advantage (some say as much as 25 per cent).

“ISRO has multiplied its launches over the years. Earlier, we did one launch a year. Now we do four. Next year, it is likely to be six. Priority was given for PSLV and Chandrayaan-1. But we have kept GSLV’s sub-systems ready,’’ Nair admits.

As for the GSLV Mark III, ISRO officials say that three important ground tests will be conducted some time next year and the first launch will happen by 2010 end or early 2011.

ISRO is also working on a re-usable launch vehicle. Re-use of the various stages of PSLV and GSLV will reduce launch costs dramatically. “The re-usable launch vehicle is still in a concept stage. Over the next two years, we will need to do demonstration projects… and expect one to be ready to use in 2020 or so,” Nair says.