Two prominent space scientists of the country ascribed the failure of Saturday’s Geo-Synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle mission to the carelessness of the Isro staff.
“To me, it looks like a ground-level mechanical failure which is very basic in nature,” said former head of the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre of the Isro, D. Sasi Kumar
adding, “This is the most stupid thing to have happened to a space mission of this magnitude.” Mr Sasi Kumar and the Tirunelveli-born Mr Nambi Narayanan are rated as the founding fathers of the country’s GSLV rocket programme.
“From the TV visuals, I got a feeling that the strap-on rockets of the first stage got detached within seconds of the lift-off,” Mr Kumar told this newspaper. “A failure of this kind should not have happened and there are no excuses. This is nothing but carelessness.”
Mr Narayanan, another former director of the LPSC, pointed out that this was the first failure of its kind in Isro’s chequered history.
“In the case of the failed PSLV mission of the eighties, it was the third stage which went bust,” said Mr Narayanan. “Today’s incident was like losing a stage which was so far fully successful. I do feel that the Isro engineers have not done their homework properly. The failure of the first stage booster/strap-on is unheard of.”
Both the scientists ruled out the possibilities of any sabotage.
“The scenario would have been very different,” said Mr Narayanan.