Isro becomes sixth space agency in world to be successful with indigenous cryogenic engine.
Bangalore: The Indian Space Research Organisation achieved yet another milestone on Sunday after it successfully launched it’s “naughty boy” the GSLV D5 with an indigenous cryogenic engine from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota at 4.18 pm.
With this launch, Isro joined a select club of nations and became only the sixth space agency in the world to have tasted success with an indigenous cryogenic engine. The other successful countries are the USA, Russia, Japan, China and France.
“I am extremely happy and proud to say team ISRO has done it.
The Indian cryogenic engine performed as predicted for this mission and injected the GSAT-14 communication satellite into the intended orbit precisely,” chairman of Isro, K. Radhakrishnan said at the Mission Control Room soon after the launch vehicle placed the 1,982 kg GSAT-14 satellite into the intended orbit.
K. Sivan, mission director of GSLV said, “We used to call GSLV a naughty boy of Isro. The naughty boy has become obedient today. He has meticulously done the job of injecting the satellite precisely. For the past decade we were waiting for such type of performance from India. The 1,000 seconds of GSLV flight is fruit of 1,000 days of hard and dedicated work of Isro teams,”
S. Ramakirshnan director of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre said, “ In the first attempt (GSLV-D3), we almost made it but the starting process could not proceed beyond ignition. It was definitely a big challenge to understand what really went wrong. We had the benefit of the knowledge of all Isro teams and everyone put heads together. We analysed the failure and worked hard to make this attempt a success.”
Read more: Ten things you should know about GSLV D5
GSLV-D5 is the eighth flight of GSLV. GSAT-14 is the 23rd geostationary communication satellite built by Isro which augments in-orbit capacity of trans-ponders.
The scheduled launch of GSLV-D3 on April 15, 2010 from Shar was failed. Isro revisited the entire design of the GSLV apart from the indigenous cryogenic engine. On August 19, 2013 Isro aborted another attempt minutes before the launch after liquid fuel leaked from the second stage of the launch vehicle.
Meanwhile, CM N. Kiran Kumar Reddy, TD chief N. Chandrababu Naidu and other leaders congratulated Isro for their success.
( Source : agencies/ dc )
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