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| Space setback: INSAT 4C follows Agni III into sea | | | Sriharikota (Andhra Pradesh), July 10: After the failure of Agni III missile, India's space programme received a major setback on Monday when the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV-F02) carrying the INSAT 4C communication satellite veered from its projected path and came crashing down.
ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair, admitting the failure of the mission, said, "things have gone wrong in the stage of separation (of the booster from the launch vehicle). We have to analyse the data why it went wrong".
The launch vehicle, carrying the 2168kg satellite to boost to Direct-to-Home television service and digital news gathering, deviated from its chartered path soon after the lift-off from Satish Dhawan Space Centre at 1738 hours and disintegrated into a ball of fire.
Soon after the failure of the mission, ISRO officials put the entire system on "emergency condition".
The jubilation among the scientists at the control station of the Space Centre immediately after the launch soon turned into despair as the launch vehicle hurtled down into the Bay of Bengal.
The INSAT-42 launch debacle came a day after the Agni-III nuclear-capable ballistic missile with a range up to 3,500km, failed to hit its target off the coast of Orissa and splashed into the sea.
The INSAT-4C satellite was the heaviest in its class. This was the first launch of GSLV from the Rs 350-crore sophisticated launch pad, commissioned in May 2005.
The 49-metre-tall, 414 tonne GSLV was a three-stage vehicle. The first stage, GS1, comprised a core motor with 138 tonne of solid propellants and four strap-on motors, each with 42 tonnes of hypergolic liquid propellant.
The second stage had 39 tonne of the same hypergolic liquid propellant. The third (GS3) was a cryogenic stage with 12.6 tonne of Liquid Oxygen (LOX) and Liquid Hydrogen (LH2).
The INSAT 4C, the second satellite in the INSAT 4 series, was aimed at strengthening video picture transmission besides providing space for National Informatics Centre's VSAT connectivity. The lifespan of the satellite was expected to be 10 years.
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