GSLV debris recovered, ISRO for salvaging launch

New Delhi, Nov 3: Nearly four months after it fell into the sea during take-off, scientists have recovered most of the debris of the Geosynchronous Launch Vehicle (GSLV) in an operation that could reveal what went wrong with the flight that would have catapulted the country into the cash-rich commercial satellite launch market.

About 550 divers and four ships searched a 92 sq.km. area in the Bay of Bengal near the Sriharikota launch centre of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to salvage the parts, including three strap-on liquid proppelant motors in the GSLV stage-I that malfunctioned.

The search team from the National Centre for Antarctica and Ocean Research (NCOAR), Goa and National Institute of Ocean Technology, Chennai, however, missed the vital part, the fourth strap-on motor, which ISRO scientists believe was the cause of the GSLV failure on July 10.

''We couldn't recover the motor or any of its parts from the sea.

But we can't draw any final conclusion whether it was destroyed during the take-off of the vehicle,'' Science and Technology and Earth Sciences Minister Kapil Sibal told a news conference.

An ISRO Committee appointed to investigate the failure will give the final verdict on the reasons for the failure of the much-touted launch of the last-general launch vehicle.

The GSLV went off the flight path 59 seconds into take-off on July 10 before finally the launch centre pressed the self-destruct button to destroy the rocket. The parts ended up on the sea bed in Bay of Bengal, 7.5 km from the launch pad near the shore.

The search operation, which began on July 16, used sonar imagery to locate the debris under a depth of 12-20 metres in 100 days.

The recovery is said to be only the second of its kind after a similar search for a failed Ariane rocket of the European Space Agency in 1996.

''It was sometimes difficult for the divers to search because of heavy undercurrents in the sea due to the monsoon,'' said Dr M Sudhakar, group director at NCOAR, who was part of the search team.

The GSLV flight would have place an experimental satellite GSAT-I in a geosynchronous orbit. Its failure came as a blow to ISRO's plan to enter the commercial market for launch of satellites of other countries. The next GSLV launch is scheduled for next year.

UNI