India marks first with launch of four satellites http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-01-10T142120Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-282989-1.xml
Wed Jan 10, 2007
By R. Bhagwan Singh
SRIHARIKOTA, India (Reuters) - India launched four satellites on a single rocket for the first time on Wednesday, including one that will be brought back to earth to set the stage for the country to send an astronaut into space.
The successful launch was also the first after the state-run space agency's plan to put one of its heaviest satellites into space failed last July as the rocket went into a tailspin and disintegrated soon after lift-off.
On Wednesday, the PSLV-C7 rocket took off from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launchpad in Sriharikota on the southeast coast, carrying two small Indian satellites and one each from Indonesia and Argentina.
"We have done it, we have done it well, we have done it correctly," ISRO Chairman G. Madhavan Nair said after the launch. "It was a successful textbook mission and our boys have done well."
One of the Indian satellites, the 550-kg (1,200 lb) Space Capsule Recovery Equipment (SRE-1), would test ISRO's ability to recover an orbiting space capsule and technology associated with the complicated exercise.
ISRO approved India's first indigenous manned mission into space in November, aiming to put an astronaut outside the earth's atmosphere by 2014. In 1984, air force pilot Rakesh Sharma was the first Indian to go into space, riding in a Soviet spacecraft. So far, only the United States, the former Soviet Union and China have launched humans into space on board their own rockets.
ISRO is already working on the launch of its first unmanned mission to orbit the moon in 2008, powered by a locally built rocket. Discussions have also been held about sending a person to the moon by 2020.
ISRO is planning to increase the number of its satellite launches and capture about 10 percent of the $2 billion global market in the coming years with its low launch rates.
It also hopes to build communication satellites and launch them for developing nations.
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