Glorious history of ISRO’s continuous transformation- 50 years:
How did we start:
First ever lab used by ISRO was Thumba Church which is also fondly called as Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS). The beach next to the church was of course the launch station.
First launch – Aryabhatta -1975
1975, when India was the topper in the list of countries affected majorly because of the Oil & gas price hike due to the energy crisis worldwide, Team ISRO was literally burning midnight oil to get our own Aryabhatta launched. We did it, amidst all the crisis, successfully!
First launch vehicle – SLV 3- 1980
ISRO built own launch vehicle in 1980. By this time there was a very small list of countries to have indigenously launched a satellite-carrying rocket into space. That was SLV-3 , carrying the satellite Rohini !
ISRO took the big leap, PSLV- 1993
Though PSLV had witnessed a partial failure in first attempt, till now this ISRO’s workhorse has launched 38 satellites into the space contributing to a significant share of India in world’s communication and space technology sect.
The time when India went beyond cloud9 and touched moon , Chandrayaan 1- 2008.
Chandrayaan 1 was also the first mission that put ISRO on the global map. The mission, reached lunar orbit on November 8 and remained functional till 28 August 2009, which was when the mission was officially closed. However, Chandrayaan was still in the lunar orbit as late as 2016 in a finding detected by NASA.
When we touched Mars- Mangalyaan – 2013.
Another excellent achievement by ISRO when the whole world started observing India. India is the first country in the world to reach Mars in its very first attempt and only the fourth country to reach the Red Planet.This whole prep to journey took 9 months, but it was done in a budget that is lesser than a Hollywood movie ( Gravity, remember ? )
104 satellites at one go – 2017
ISRO decided to launch a breathtaking 104 satellites into space. This included Satellites from dozens of countries including US. This launch was significant since it also showed just how far India had come from the time when Indian Satellites had to get on to a USSR launch vehicle.
When ISRO launched the big boy! GSLV Mk III
It was graduation day for ISRO. With the recent launch of the Geo-synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III, ISRO has finally entered the club of the boys with the big guns. With a payload capacity of 4,000 kg, the GSLV Mk III marks ISRO’s first step towards making the Indian dream of sending manned missions to space a reality pretty soon.
tea biscuits at 3 PM 