Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Booster
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The glorious journey began at the magnanimous
St.Mary Magdalene Church (left),
it was the first lab and office of ISRO
Currently maintained as a majestic Space Museum - Image: ISROHQ
THE EVOLUTION OF INDIA’S ROCKET PROGRAM
In 1962 in a rather nondescript fishing hamlet called Thumba near Thiruvananathapuram close to the sea, two stalwarts and visionaries of the Indian Space and Nuclear program were scouting for a new rocket launching facility along with other fellow scientists. One was the blue-blooded Dr. Vikram Sarabhai and the other the aristocratic Dr. Homi Jehangir Bhabha. Within a year’s time the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) was born. This was just a humble beginning but over the years, India achieved the capability of building its own launch vehicles, remote sensing, communication, defense and navigation satellites, launch interplanetary and lunar missions, design and develop the closely guarded and cutting-edge cryogenic engine. TERLS primarily focused on launching sounding rockets (SR) to study of equatorial electro-jet phenomena, which is a stream of electric current flowing in a narrow band on either side of the magnetic equator at a height of around 100 kms.
