NEW DELHI — A failure analysis committee has found no design problems with India’s Geo-Synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), despite two successive failures in 2010. “We had the opportunity to look at all aspects of [the] GSLV, at not only the missions that failed but also the successful missions,” says G. Madhavan Nair, the chairman of the failure analysis committee and a former chief of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). “We could not find any design deficiency with respect to the GSLV.”
India’s GSLV program suffered a major setback when the GSLV (D3) and the GSLV-F06 suffered back-to-back failures in April and December 2010, with the rockets plunging into the Bay of Bengal minutes after liftoff.
The group traced the loss of GSLV-F06 to a failure of the composite shroud on the vehicle’s Russian cryogenic engine. “The problem with GSLV is of a minor nature and it does not call for major changes,” Nair says. Discussions have begun with Russia regarding the shroud issue.
The space agency plans to launch the Chandrayaan-2, India’s second unmanned mission to the Moon, and its planned human spaceflight missions onboard GSLV rockets.
ISRO Chairman K. Radhakrishnan says the space agency has now decided to focus on developing indigenous cryogenic engines to power the Mk. 2 GSLVs.
Radhakrishnan says the GSAT-7 and Insat-3D spacecraft, which were scheduled to be launched by the GSLV, will now go up on international launchers. “The idea is that in the next launch of GSLV, we do not want to put [up] a costly, complex satellite,” Radhakrishnan says.
ISRO recently said a rocket subsystems integration facility will be established near Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh to handle Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle and GSLV launches.
Since rocket subsystems are currently manufactured in different parts of the country, the project, which is expected to be completed in about two-three years, will help reduce the need to transport sensitive hardware from far-flung locations.
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