Sign In
Learn bits
Science & Tech.
Mahesh

19/11/23 13:45 PM IST

India’s space programme turns 60

In News
  • On the evening of November 21, 1963, a 715-kg Nike Apache rocket soared from a small launch pad on the beach-head at Thumba, a fishing village on the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram.
Nike Apache launch
  • The Nike Apache launch was an international effort under the United Nations.
  • The rocket came from the U.S., the sodium vapour payload from France, and the range clearance from an MI-4 helicopter from the then Soviet Union.
  • The rocket and payload engineers were Indians.
  • The rocket had been mated with the payload in St. Mary Magdalene Church, Thumba, which had been taken over by the national government.
  • The parish priest’s house served as the mission control centre.
India Space Programme
  • India launched its first truly indigenous rocket on February 22, 1969.
  • Vasant Gowariker, who later became the Director of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Thumba, said it was “a pencil-sized rocket”.
  • On November 21, 2003, ISRO celebrated 40 years of Indian rocketry at the VSSC.
  • Today, India is an influential spacefaring nation.
  • On July 14, 2023, in its M-4 mission, a Launch Vehicle Mark 3 (LVM-3) weighing 640 tonnes lifted off from the second launch pad at Sriharikota and placed the four-tonne Chandrayaan-3 composite module into an orbit around the earth.
  • On August 23, 2023, the Chandrayaan-3 lander, named ‘Vikram’, soft-landed on the moon, and a few hours later, a rover named ‘Pragyaan’ rolled out onto the lunar surface. The success made a new kind of history for India.
Strength of India
  • On the strength of its rockets, India has been able to build and launch satellites for a variety of applications, including remote-sensing, weather-forecasting, communications, navigation, surveillance, tele-education, cartography, prospecting resources, etc.
  • It has also embarked on deep-space science missions to study the moon, Mars, the Sun, and distant stars.
  • It can build any type of launch vehicle and any type of satellite. Using these launch vehicles, it can put its satellites into different types of orbits.
Source- The Hindu

More Related Current Affairs View All

16 Jan

INS Surat, INS Nilgiri and INS Vaghsheer commissioned

'PM Modi dedicated three frontline naval combatants to the nation on their commissioning.' The naval combatants – INS Surat, INS Nilgiri and INS Vaghsheer --were commissio

Read More

15 Jan

Meta shutting down fact-checkers

'Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company will get rid of fact-checkers and simplify content policies by removing restrictions on topics as it is “out of touch with mainstre

Read More

15 Jan

Mission Mausam

'Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched  ‘Mission Mausam’, a groundbreaking initiative aimed at making India a weather-ready and climate-smart nation, as part of th

Read More

India’s First Ai-Driven Magazine Generator

Generate Your Custom Current Affairs Magazine using our AI in just 3 steps