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India Plans to Test Mega Rocket in March
posted: 09:20 am ET
05 February 2001
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india_rocket_test_010205_wg BANGALORE, India (Reuters) -- India's state-run space agency hopes next month to test a rocket that can launch heavy satellites deep into space, an official said Monday. "It will be the first experimental flight of the GSLV," a spokesman at the Bangalore-based Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) told Reuters. The GSLV or the Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle can carry satellites weighing up to 2 tons into high Earth orbit and will put India in a group of among half-a-dozen elite nations with similar capability. The ISRO spokesman said the GSLV test flight would carry an experimental satellite, GSAT 1, to test the rocket's reliability. The rocket will be launched from ISRO's seaport in southern Sriharikota town on the Bay of Bengal coast, he said. India's GSLV program has been hit by delays due to refusal by Russia -- under pressure from the United States -- to stick to its deal to provide India with rocket engine technology in 1992. Russia instead only delivered the promised seven rocket engines, leaving India to develop the technology on its own. Washington has, over the years, restricted access to technology that might have military applications and slapped significant sanctions on India after its nuclear tests in 1998. Aerospace experts have said that India can offer satellite launches at rates that would compete with those charged by the United States, Russia and recent entrant China. ISRO chairman K. Kasturirangan has said in the past that the launches could be about 25-percent cheaper than those of other countries. India made a limited entry into the commercial satellite launch market in May 1999 when the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, PSLV C2, launched two small foreign satellites into low Earth orbit.
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