Indian Space Launch Fails
A rocket carrying the heaviest satellite India has ever tried to launch disintegrated a few seconds after takeoff. There are no indications yet as to what caused the failure.
The 49-metre (161-foot) rocket was launched at 1205 GMT from an island off the coast of the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh, but veered off course and disintegrated about 30 seconds later, live television pictures showed.
"A mishap happened in the first stage of the separation and it will be some time before we know what went wrong," Madhavan Nair, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) mission chief, told reporters at the launch site on Monday.
"We have to analyse the sequence of events to see what happened."
The rocket carried a 2,168-kilogram (2.4 ton) satellite to be placed in stationary space orbit at 36,000 kilometres (22,320 miles), designed for a mission life of 10 years and meant to boost television services.
It was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota in the Bay of Bengal.
A similar version of the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle successfully placed a satellite in orbit in 2004.
India has had a somewhat spotty record on their launches in past years.
Space, Uncategorized | Gaius Monday, 10 July , 2006
By jaspal singh lamba, Friday, 11 August , 2006 @ 12:50 am
There is no mention about the name the of the satellite which ended in fiery disaster on 10th July. Kindly send me the name of the satellite on my mail mentioned above.
Thanks