After news from earlier today about the Agni missile failure
Agni-III missile fails to hit target
India exposed by missile failure
India's Test Launch of New Missile Fails
comes news about another ISRO debacle..
GSLV carrying INSAT 4C crashes
Had read somewhere some time back that ISRO's satellite program (pdf), despite all the much lauded accomplishments & claimed benefits (if you believe what you read in mainstream Indianmedia) for the 40+ year old Indian space program, is in many ways a failure because almost every launch has been hit by some snafu or 'snag' or the other. Apparently, many of the satellites did not actually reach the actual orbit ISRO scientists had targetted... and so, today, these satellites are not accomplishing all that they should/could have as they are revolving around the earth at a lower orbit.
I can't find the link I read that focused on these 'snags'... but some of them are mentioned in the above hyperlinked articles from mainstream Indian media.
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Whatever happened to this? ... ;) Men and their grandiose plans!!
India Plans to Send Spacecraft to Moon
The Indian space program has announced plans to launch an un-piloted spacecraft to the moon in 2005.
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Thank God.. ;) I bet they won't find any takers - given how difficult even NASA is finding manned missions!
Despite India's interest in reusable launch vehicle technology, it has said explicitly that it does not have plans for a manned space program, believing its space goals can be achieved without manned missions. - from India - Launch Capabilities
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REFERENCE to articles on ISRO via the wiki article
- ISRO's decade plan
- Information regarding METSAT
- BBC News article on the spy satellite
- New Scientist article on the relevance of the ISRO
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