Here Are The Men Who Made ISRO¡¯s World Record 104 Satellite Launch Possible

ISRO is one of the smallest space agencies in the world in terms of budgets. A mere $1.1 billion compared to NASA¡¯s nearly $19 billion. And when you consider the achievements, it really makes you wonder how ISRO does it. Well, we¡¯ll tell you, it¡¯s the men and women of ISRO who make it possible.

Dr K Sivan, Director VSCC

ISRO

The Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Trivandrum is where design and development activities for all the launch vehicles take place. The centre conducts research on everything, from design of rockets to fuels and composite materials and guidance systems.

The PSLV rocket that put all the 104 satellites in orbit was designed here. The centre is headed by Dr K Sivan who has been with ISRO since 1982. He designed software called SITARA, which ISRO uses for simulating trajectories of rockets.

He also led the RLV-TD project and was involved in its design qualification, aerodynamic characterisation and hardware development. The PSLV-C37 launch carried innovative experiments such as using the IRNSS navigation system for predicting the orbit of the satellites.

S Somnath, Director LPSC

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An expert in launch vehicle design, S Somnath joined ISRO back in 1985. He got associated with PSLV program early on during its design stages and led the team during the first two developmental flights of the PSLV. Later, as the Project Manager of the vehicle engineering and launch services management of PSLV Project, he was responsible for the mechanisms and pyro-technique systems of the launch vehicle. Under him, the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre built the liquid rocket stages for the PSLV rocket and the bigger GSLV. He was also responsible for the successful sub-orbital test flight of the GSLV Mk3 LVM3-X mission.

P Kunhikrishnan, Director SDSC SHAR

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Having joined ISRO in 1986, Kunhikrishnan was responsible for the flight certification of all the avionics systems of launch vehicles like the PSLV and GSLV. Under his leadership since 2010, the PSLV project completed more than 13 successful flights without any glitches.

These missions include the Mars Orbiter Mission, a launch of PSLV-C19 that carried the heaviest Indian remote sensing satellite launched by PSLV. Now as the Director at Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR, Sriharikota all the launches taking place come under his command.

Yesterday¡¯s launch of PSLV-C37 was the shortest for a PSLV mission which translates to quicker launches.

Tapan Misra, Director SAC

ISRO

The Space Applications Center is where all the systems that go into the Indian satellites are made. The centre is led by Tapan Misra, who has been with ISRO since 1984. Back in 1990 as a guest scientist at German Space Agency, he wrote an algorithm for the real-time processing of Synthetic Aperture Radar data. He also invented the algorithm called track steering algorithm for high-resolution processing of SAR data for Disaster Management.

Under his leadership, the centre built the Cartosat 2D satellite and for the first time used a 3D printed mirror supporting structure to hold the lens of the multispectral camera. Innovation by his team led to the lens taking up less space within the satellite. He also led the development of an indigenous solid state data recorder. He has two patents to his name, 6 pending patents, 5 copyrights and 25 papers to his name.

Dr M Annadurai, Director ISAC

ISRO

The ISRO Satellite Centre is where all the satellite sub-systems come together to form the final product. The Cartosat 2D, the biggest payload on the PSLV-C37 was completed by ISAC. Dr Annadurai had been asked by the Chairman of ISRO to build the satellite by January 26, but Annadurai¡¯s team did it well before time. Usually, a repeat satellite (previous Cartosat launch was in June) usually takes a year. He and his team are also preparing the GSAT series of satellites that will be launched in the coming months from Sirharikota.