It was in this modest sleepy fishing village that the first seed of space science was borne that later initiated the quest for space programs in India…
Overlooking the Arabian Sea, Thumba is a small village bordering Menamkulam in the Thiruvananthapuram city of Kerala. It was on 21 November, 1963 that the first sounding rocket was launched from Thumba. But over the years, this place has been lost in oblivion… one of the reasons being that with the Indian space program becoming more robust, there was need for a newer, bigger state-of-theart launch pad in the form of Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh.
One man’s dream
At a time when two space superpowers (USSR and America) were competing against each other by launching various space programs, India was just beginning to wake up from the newly acquired Independence. But it was the dream of one man, Dr. Vikram Sarabhai (the father of Indian space program) that changed the whole perception towards space science in the country. In fact it was Dr. Vikram Sarabhai who convinced the Americans and the Russians and other space agencies
at that time to use Thumba as a launching pad for their rockets as it had the advantage of close proximity to earth’s magnetic equator. Basically a magnetic equator is an imaginary line on the surface of the Earth where magnetic lines of force are directed horizontally (or where a magnetic needle that is free to rotate remains horizontal). It means that at all points of the line, the magnetic dip is equal to zero.
Donation from Church
But before convincing the Russians and the Americans, Dr. Vikram Sarabhai had to first persuade Rev. Fr. Peter Bernard Pereira who was the bishop of St. Mary Magdalene Church at that time. Since the place where the church stood was ideal for a launch pad, the bishop readily agreed to give the church over for space research. The fishermen and their families were also promised jobs in the premises and they also moved out. It was this church that housed the first unit of the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launch Station (TERLS), which was later named the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre. In fact the St. Mary Magdalene Church housed the first office of the Thumba Space Centre. The prayer room was Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam’s first laboratory, the bishop’s room was his design and drawing office.
The first launch
It was a sounding rocket, called Nike-Apache, made at NASA that was first launched from Thumba. The rocket was assembled in the church building and was shifted from the church premises to the launchpad by truck. Later, the payload for the Rohini launch was famously transported on a bicycle. This was just the beginning for the Indian space program and scientists grabbed the opportunity with both the hands. Apart from Indian payload, sounding rockets from many other countries including United States, Russia, Japan, France, and Germany were also launched from Thumba as part of mutual international collaboration. TERLS quickly developed infrastructure for all aspects of rocketry, ranging from rocket design, rocket propellant, rocket motor casting, integration, payload-assembly, testing, evaluation besides building subsystems like payload housing and jettisonable nose cone. However, the rocket launch from TERLS came to a stand-still in 2000. Later in 2002, the rocket launchings were resumed from TERLS. ISRO sometime back announced their plans to launch 180 number of RH-200 rockets from TERLS over the next few years.
-Manoj Mahanta
ScienceNow
