Aug 11 1979
From The Space Library
The Washington Post reported that India's "problem-plagued space program" had suffered another setback August 10 when a seven-story-tall launcher, product of 11 years of work, crashed 5 minutes 15 seconds after liftoff and dropped its payload into the Bay of Bengal 300 miles from the takeoff point. The failure was a real disappointment, following USSR launches of two India satellites, both of which developed serious problems: the first, orbited in April 1975, lost power after a few days. A much more complex satellite launched in June 1979 from a Soviet site would have mapped India's surface using television cameras to record mineral deposits, water reservoirs, forests, and Himalayan snow cover; the cameras failed to switch on, and scientists got only the data from lesser experiments on oceans.
This launch was India's first attempt to orbit its own spacecraft on its own launcher from its own site (the small island of Sriharikota north of Madras, whose residents were moved to the mainland as a precaution). Though reporters were not allowed to attend, government cameramen were present. All publicity on India's space program discussed mineral location and other social uses, but the Washington Post noted the military element: India was trying to join the "club" that included the United States, France, the Soviet Union, China, and Japan; India had lost a border war with China in 1962 and had been at war with Pakistan three times in the past 30 years. A rocket able to orbit a spacecraft could give India intermediate-range ballistic-missile capability; a satellite transmitting television images of mineral resources could also monitor troop movements. The lost booster was a four-stage rocket with solid-propellant motors designed to orbit an 88-pound satellite. The launch had been successful until first-stage burnout; the anomaly had occurred in second-stage flight. (W Post, Aug 11/79, A-13)
The JSC Roundup carried a report by J.M. Jones, public affairs officer, on the trip to Australia by four MSFC employees acting as a Skylab investigating team to check up on the path of debris over an area 20 miles wide and several hundred miles long. The team left Huntsville, Ala., July 13, two days after the midnight spectacular that occurred as the 77-ton Skylab descended and broke up over the Indian Ocean. NASA needed interviews with eyewitnesses and finders of the fragments to verify the location of the trajectory and the condition and precise location of the debris, and if possible to get samples for examination of the effects on spacecraft materials of more than six years of exposure.
Arriving in Canberra, the team held press conferences to explain the assignment and assure finders that they could keep any fragments they found, which would be returned if submitted for scientific study. At the coastal town of Esperance, local groups similar to U.S. rescue squads had spread the word and gathered about 30 numbered and cataloged specimens laid out in a warehouse for examination; most of them were "apparently really Skylab." The team expressed appreciation of the local people's helpfulness. Going inland several hundred miles to the goldfield region where heavier pieces were more probable, the team found the people just as friendly and helpful. When light-plane flights over 30 or 40 miles of uninhabited territory produced no further finds, the team returned with a stop at Canberra to thank officials for the "extraordinary assistance and friendliness" they had met. (JSC Roundup, Aug 10/79, 3)
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