We have won back nation's confidence: Madhavan Nair

Sriharikota, Jan 10: A jubilant ISRO Chairman Madhavan Nair said his team had won back the confidence of the nation in today's space mission putting behind the failure of the GSLV F02 launch last year.

''It's a great day for our country. We have done it precisely six months after the failure of GSLV F02 on this day in July last year,'' he told reporters after the successful launch of PSLV-C7 from the SHAR range here.

Mr Nair, who had scripted his success story right from the first launch after he assumed office as the ISRO chief, however, tasted his first failure when the GSLV-F02 failed in its mission on July ten, 2006.

''It's a text-book mission. We have done it successfully,'' a beaming ISRO chief said on the success of the first multiple mission.

''We have put all the four satellites into the required orbits. Our boys have done extremely well,'' he said and added ''next year, our target is moon mission Chandrayan-1.'' Addressing the post-launch press conference, Mr Nair said ''it was a very precisely planned and perfect mission. ''We can challenge anybody to do better than this,'' he said.

Ever since ISRO fixed the date and time for the launch 45 days back, everything went on as per schedule and the vehicle blasted off as scheduled at 0923 hrs, he said.

''The entire planning and implementation went on well and all the credit goes to the ISRO community,'' Mr Nair said.

With today's successful launch and the injection of the first of its kind Space Capsule Recovery Experiment (SRE-1), India has forayed into the re-entry technology and joined the elite group of nations in possessing the technology. The country has also come a step closer to sending an Indian to space.

UNI