NEW DELHI – India’s space programme would be completing its 55thanniversary this year on November 21, as it was on this day in 1963, whenthe first Nike-Apache sounding rocket was fired from Thumba in Kerala.Though the day is a landmark in India’s space history and is considered thestarting point of India’s space journey, a lot of activities in the area ofspace research were going on in India for over a decade before 1963.
The scientists who were working in these areas included towering figureslike CV Raman, Meghnad Saha, Vikram Sarabhai and Homi Bhabha. All of thesepeople contributed immensely to the growth of research in basic and appliedsciences in India.
Back in the late 1940s, after India’s Independence and the decade thatfollowed, institutions were coming up slowly. This included some keyinstitutions like the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and the PhysicalResearch Laboratory. Many of the senior scientists associated with theIndian space programme in its early years were working in theseinstitutions.
These institutions are important because the they were pioneering researchin the field of atomic energy and hence were behind the shaping up ofIndia’s nuclear programme. Therefore, it can be said that India’s spaceprogramme was an upshot of the country’s nuclear programme.
In those times, there was fluidity and non-compartmentalisation ofspace-related areas and nuclear areas. It can also be seen by looking atthe lives of Bhabha (Father of the India’s nuclear programme) and Sarabhai(Father of the India’s space programme), that they both played key roles inshaping India’s atomic and space programmes. These two programmes wereinterconnected in many ways. The argument that India’s space programme grewout of the country’s atomic programme stands because scientists in theDepartment of Atomic Energy, scientists working in atomic physics, andinstitutions working on atomic physics, all three came together to makesure that India’s space journey could truly take off.
All three were provided resources in terms of manpower and money. Thescientific resolution tabled by the Nehru government in 1958 talked aboutthe prospects of scientific growth in India and through this the atomicprogramme developed as the core while the space programme developed out ofit.
It took around a decade for the space programme to become self-sustainedand get out of the embrace of the atomic programme, and this occurred whenthe Department of Space was constituted. The Government of Indiaconstituted the Space Commission and established the Department of Space(DOS) in June 1972 and brought ISRO under DOS in September 1972. The factthat compartmentalisation never happened (process was never completed) isgood because space and nuclear sciences as disciplines are not entirelyseparate.
The other linkage between the nuclear and space programme is thatinstitutions in the field of science came up after Independence, the mostprominent of them being the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad setup by Vikram Sarabhai. This is not the only example. Other institutes likethe Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Raman Research Institute etc.,too, were focused on areas related to nuclear research, atomic physics aswell as atmospheric sciences, which included studies related to cosmic raysand phenomenon like equatorial electrojet, which later contributed to theIndian space programme as well.
This is because the sounding rockets, which led to the birth of the spaceprogramme, were fired primarily to study the phenomenon of equatorialelectrojet. Equatorial electrojet is a stream of electrons whizzing acrossthe sky, about 110-120 km above the Earth’s surface.
The third linkage between the two programmes was the constitution of theIndian National Committee for Space Research (INCOSPAR) in 1962, under theNehru government. When the government under Jawaharlal Nehru decided toconstitute the
Indian National Committee for Space Research (which was an autonomousbody), the noteworthy thing was that this committee got constituted in theDepartment of Atomic Energy in February 1962. Most of the members of thiscommittee, which included scientists like Sarabhai, MGK Menon, AP Mitra, KRRamanathan, EV Chitnis, were already big names working in the area ofatomic physics in some form or the other. INCOSPAR was a stepping stonetowards the genesis of Indian space programme. There is no dearth oflinkages between the two programmes.
The iconic image of Dr APJ Abdul Kalam wearing the Army uniform duringPokhran II nuclear tests in 1998 is still very much remembered by people.Although, Dr Kalam was working with DRDO during Pokhran 2, he had aglorious career as a rocket scientist at ISRO behind him. Dr Kalam’sexample shows just how much the Indian nuclear programme relies on and owesto its space scientists.
*BY: Martand Jha, The author is a junior research fellow at the School ofInternational Studies, JNU. Views are personal.*