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Indian Satellite Lost in Launch Explosion

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the little-late-for-fireworks dept.

An anonymous reader writes "BBC News is reporting that the recent communications satellite launch in India has met with disaster. The satellite, designed to enhance India's telephone and communications network, was lost when the rocket carrying it veered off course and exploded. This is the second disappointment in recent launch attempts, coming just one day after the failed long-range ballistic missile test launch."

31 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. well by MrSquirrel · · Score: 3, Funny

    I guess it's a good thing NASA doesn't outsource.

    --
    A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
    1. Re:well by dracken · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Maybe you should read this.

      "India's six remote-sensing satellites - the largest such constellation in the world. These monitor the country's land and coastal waters so that scientists can advise rural communities on the location of aquifers and where to find watercourses, suggest to fishermen when to set sail for the best catch, and warn coastal communities of imminent storms (see "Eyes in the sky"). India's seven communication satellites, the biggest civilian system in the Asia-Pacific region, now reach some of the remotest corners of the country, providing television coverage to 90 per cent of the population. The system is also being used to extend remote healthcare services and education to the rural poor."

      Or this about PSLV

      "It was developed to allow India to launch its Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellites into sun synchronous orbits, a service that was, until the advent of the PSLV, commercially viable only from Russia"

    2. Re:well by rts008 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Very good reply! Well done.
      This is what keeps me coming back to /. when I decide to give up on it due to the inane, kneejerk, blatant fanboy, etc. posts that are getting more numerous all the time.

      Your post was:
      concise, informative, not insulting/derogatory, and directly addressed the point.
      I heartily give you A+ since I have no mod points to give. :)

      --
      Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
    3. Re:well by Kadin2048 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      While I'm always up for an opportunity to bolster my sense of baseless, nationalistic superiority, NASA's had some strings of bad luck, too.

      The Loss of Mars Observer. Oops.
      Whatever Happened to the Mars Polar Lander? Double Oops.
      NASA's metric confusion caused Mars orbiter loss. Durh...

      Space exploration -- even just putting stuff into orbit -- is a risky proposition at the best of times. Any agency pushing the envelope of what they've done before is bound to have some failures, but this is sometimes the price you pay for eventual success.

      --
      "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
  2. Indian Astronauts by Durrok · · Score: 5, Funny

    Monday's flight was also supposed to set the stage for an Indian mission to the Moon.

    Something tells me there may be a lack of volunteers for this now...

    --
    I keep telling myself I'm not the desperate type.
    1. Re:Indian Astronauts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      The moon mission (chandrayan) is going to be an unmanned one. And yes, it appears that NASA and ESA are indeed in talks to 'outsource' some of their moon probes to that mission.

    2. Re:Indian Astronauts by HoneyBunchesOfGoats · · Score: 4, Funny

      You should keep in mind that it will be a mission to the moon, not a mission to and from it.

    3. Re:Indian Astronauts by timeOday · · Score: 4, Insightful
      So what? I'd still go, and I think many others would volunteer for a one-way mission as well.
      Not me. Frankly there are many more interesting places on Earth I haven'tseen yet (for that matter, India itself). The reason nobody has been to the moon for the last few decades is mainly because there's nothing much up there.
  3. Dang! by Morky · · Score: 5, Funny

    Rockets is hard!

  4. I think it was by drpimp · · Score: 4, Funny

    Homer Simpson who said it best .... "DOH!"

    --
    -- Brought to you by Carl's JR
  5. This just in by geekoid · · Score: 5, Funny

    Building rockets is as hard as rocket science.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  6. It isn't as easy as it looks... by Erwos · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm not surprised. It sounds easy to launch a rocket (hell, we've been doing it since forever, right?), yet in the light of this failure, North Korea's blown ICBM launch, and SpaceX's spectacular failure a while back, perhaps the difficulty of such things needs to be reassessed in the minds of the average Slashdot reader.

    Certainly, the ESA and NASA have something to be proud of when they actually manage to get stuff into orbit :).

    -Erwos

    --
    Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
    1. Re:It isn't as easy as it looks... by EvanED · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What you say is true. Actually, last night I arrived back home after spending about 3 weeks at Norway's Andoya Rocket Range where a little over a week ago there was the launch of a sounding rocket I helped build the payload for as a project at college. Our launch was in conjunction with another launch from actual scientists in Europe called HotPay1. The HotPay launch came 26 minutes after ours. Unfortunately, 7 to 8 seconds into flight either the payload broke off the motor or the motor broke in half. (As of last I heard, they weren't sure what happened.) So these things still do NOT always go well.

      And that was just a single stage sounding rocket too; not even in the same category as an orbital flight.

      P.S. I'd have started this post with "you might even say 'it IS rocket science" but another poster took that joke already...

  7. Props to India for trying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I have a lot of respect for countries which have a space program and attempt to launch rockets into space, whether they succeed or not.

  8. Re:disappointment? by grapeape · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Actually it was one day after India tested their missile.

    From the Article:
    "It came a day after a test-fire of India's longest-range nuclear-capable ballistic missile ended in failure."

    Yep, it didnt get much press, guess no one cared since it was a "friendly" country testing this time.

  9. In other news... by Cherita+Chen · · Score: 4, Funny

    In other news, Pakistan is reporting that it will not seek retribution for the explosion which rocked their capital earlier this morning, as no casualties have been reported. Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Azis was quoted as saying, "Satellite my ass, you missed bitch"...

    --
    I'm not fat, just big boned...
  10. Re:disappointment? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Did I get that right? An unattentive commenter mistakes an Indian satellite for a North Korean ICBM?
    Doesn't anybody screen these postss?

  11. Re:well (Wrong) by ZSpade · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Outsourced the shuttle to a private company
    Nasa is looking to outsource even more!
    The article title made me laugh in light of your comment.

    Like almost every other branch of the government, NASA does outsource. They contract out the building of almost any sort of vehicle out to private companies who are all competing for it.

    Now if you think I'm just picking apart your statement for fun, you're only half right, look at this:

    In light of this article, scary.

    --
    Go ahead and call me unreliable; reliable is just a synonym for predictable.
  12. You were talking like it was the end of the world by Rheingold · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Anyone else reminded of "1999 was the year that the Indian nuclear satellite went out of control."?

    --
    Wil
    wiki
  13. It's ok by me by Harmonious+Botch · · Score: 5, Funny

    It was a communications satellite, right? Anything that limits the possibility of my tech support calls getting routed to India is just fine by me.

  14. GSLV exploded... by dracken · · Score: 5, Informative

    The GSLV had 2 successful launches before, launching the GSAT experimental satellite and the EDUSAT educational satellite. India's moon mission is unmanned and will use the PSLV rocket which has had six successful launches so far.

  15. Unfortunate Coincidence? by CodeMasterPhilzar · · Score: 4, Funny
    From the article, it appears the two rockets were different designs/models, and launched from different sites. So probably no correlation there... Still, I'll bet there are lots of engineering types losing sleep over there right now.

    They have had 12 successful commercial launches in a row, a good record. But now they're 0 for 2 in their last to big launch attempts.

    Note to self, stay out of the Bay of Bengal when they're launching. ;-)

    --
    --- Just another Code-Monkey
  16. Failure but impressive record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Even though this launch failed, I would think the Indian Space Research OPrganizaiton is doing a tremendous job. Given their meagre budget ($700 million ISRO Wiki ) , their past record is definitely impressive . Most of their launches so far have been in polar orbits (remote sensing and spy satellites). They used ESA's Ariane rockets till yesterday for their geostationary communication satellite requirements.

  17. In other news... by lelitsch · · Score: 5, Funny

    There was a small, secret "hey, our new invisible space-based laser has worked three times in a row now" party at Vandenberg AFB.

  18. Well, when it comes to exploding rockets, by ScrewMaster · · Score: 3, Funny

    You're a better bomb than I, Gunga Din.

    --
    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  19. Mumbai by bobbo69 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Offtopic I know, but just wanted to say my thoughts are with India after the bombings today. Fucking terrorists :(

    1. Re:Mumbai by dvNull · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Thanks.

      As an Indian living in the US, it was quite a morning for me as I tried to get in touch with relatives in Mumbai to make sure that they are all right.

      Kind of scary too, as when I am in Mumbai I almost always take the trains there.

  20. Re:India keep wasting money in pissing contests by ScrewMaster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well, military applications aside, the truth of the matter is that satellites of all kinds have had a tremendous positive impact on economies and populations the world over. Communications, weather-monitoring, resource exploitation, scientific research ... no, I can't fault India for trying to use near-space to its advantage. Why not ... everyone else is. Besides, if you want to alleviate issues of social networking and education (two big steps towards improving living conditions in general) advanced communications are important. Satellite technology is one way to get that, and given the size and population of India, I would rather think that building out surface infrastructure would be prohibitively expensive, at least in the near term. Hell, it took the United States decades and billions of dollars to put a phone in every house, and I don't think India wants to wait that long.

    --
    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  21. it dint just explode.. by vasanth · · Score: 5, Informative

    the satellite dint just explode but was made to explode when its path deviate from the intended one... thats a big difference.. http://www.outlookindia.com/pti_news.asp?id=398107 "Following this, the vehicle deviated to about 10 degrees, leading to the mission control giving the 'destruct command'."

  22. probable cause of the accident by RelliK · · Score: 3, Funny

    The engineers called tech support while assembling the rocket but couldn't quite understand the accent.

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    ___
    If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
  23. NASA's job is outsourcing by dangermouse · · Score: 3, Informative
    NASA is made for outsourcing. That's partly the point of NASA. It's as much about driving the strategic American aerospace industry as it is about conducting research and space flight missions for their own sake.

    From the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which established NASA:

    (d) The aeronautical and space activities of the United States shall be conducted so as to contribute materially to one or more of the following objectives:

    ...

    (5) The preservation of the role of the United States as a leader in aeronautical and space science and technology and in the application thereof to the conduct of peaceful activities within and outside the atmosphere;

    ...

    (9) The preservation of the United States preeminent position in aeronautics and space through research and technology development related to associated manufacturing processes.