Saturday, December 25, 2010

GSLV-F06 Launch Fails, Vehicle Explodes

The GSLV-F06 mission has failed, with the launch vehicle exploding about roughly 55 seconds into the flight, at about an altitude of 13km. It was carrying the GSAT-5P communications satellite.



The plan was to use GSLV to launch the Chandrayaan-2 mission. Now that schedule would have to set back by today's failure. That's too bad, because Chandrayaan-2 was scheduled to be the nearest moon launch by anyone, which would have made it the first mission to follow up on the discovery of water on the Moon.

11 comments:

Arvind said...

they should wind up isro. whatever they do is screwdriver technology with parts from russia. there is no accountability. even when there are failures, heads never roll.

Ishan said...

@arvind - Go get a life man . If it's so easy you help those petty souls naah but i doubt whether your petty mind will have enough of a skill to sweep that place . It's easy pointing fingers difficult building things f

Arvind said...

ishan: no need to have this sense of false pride. let me quickly burst that bubble for you: wikileaks cables and other scams show that the indian establishment cares more about foreigners than indian people. so don't take it personally when i criticize the corrupt establishment.

on the indian scientific establishment. they are one of the biggest hoaxes on this planet. not only is everything from russia, but when the russians pull out, they feel helpless. the "indigenously" built submarine was built by onsite russian engineers, isro's cryogenic engine was the same, the russian nuclear test was a fizzle, haf keeps "testing" their awacs style plane for decades, isro's moon project will surely have an "international team" because i know that isro is incapable of doing anything themselves.

i've left out one establishment - drdo. drdo has two great achievements. they shared technology with the guy in jaipur who makes artificial legs and they made frozen vegetable biryani for soldiers. i am not kidding, i heard this from abdul kalam himself!

the last i heard about drdo a few weeks ago was that they are planning to build a doppler radar. really? the cheapest versions of these are available for a little more than a hundred dollars and used in speed guns.

Julian said...

Thanks to Arvind for speaking the unpalatable truth.

DRDO and ISRO are total jokes and a waste of taxpayer money.

They are nothing but gravy train's for pot bellied babu's.

Look at this joke:

http://indopakdef.wordpress.com/2009/07/22/indian-army-abandons-plans-to-order-more-arjuns/

Ya so much for DRDO's "genius".

Why do we suffer from this false pride and keep feeding the pakora eating pot bellies of these clowns when they fail repeatedly.

Seriously if they were such "geniuses" then how come there isn't a single weapon designed by them that's widely used or well known. When you think of America you think of m4's, abrams tank, f-35, colts, remington etc. With Russia its AK 47 and Britain for example is Enfield.

Indian govt clowns followed British and Muslim tyrants in keeping the population disarmed through tyrannical gun control and only thing you can get is gov't made garbage and thats where the sainted DRDO comes in.

Apparently DRDO has recently made rubber bullets wow what a grand achievement and before that I heard of some chilli tear gas, my head is reeling on why the rest of the world isn't lining up to buy our weapons.

san said...

Alright, everyone, simmer down. It's been a bad day for ISRO, and unfortunately things did not go as planned. It's worth noting here that this GSLV configuration had been changed compared to previous ones. The rocket had been upgraded to support greater payload size and weight, and this included a significantly larger faring at the top (the upper payload/nosecone section). That may have made the rocket a bit more top-heavy, and thus more difficult to control.

If you review the video footage a moment prior to the rocket's breakup and explosion, you will see that the rocket starts to twist. That's when the sections began to come apart, due to bad angle of attack. So it looks like a control system problem, whereby the rocket wasn't able to compensate for the moment-to-moment deviations from the straight flight path. Again, I suspect that the modifications to the rocket to accommodate higher payload may have made it more difficult to control.

The GSAT-5P carried aboard was the heaviest payload yet that ISRO has tried to launch on its own.

san said...

I'll also add that the rocket had been slightly lengthened too - again, to add more fuel mass to lift that extra payload mass.

So, in simple terms, imagine if you are holding up a pole that is slightly longer and more heavy at the top than you are normally used to, then you might have a little more trouble holding it upright.

san said...

Let me also suggest that maybe ISRO has to just abandon this GSLV-Mk2 design to leave it behind, and simply progress on to the eagerly awaited GSLV-Mk3 design. Unlike the long thin pencil design of this GSLV-Mk2 which has failed on multiple occasions, the planned GSLV-Mk3 is shorter and stubbier. Thus the problem of holding up a longer top-heavier pole is not as applicable here.

http://www.india365.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/gslv.jpg

The left-most rocket in the picture is the GSLV-Mk2, which is what failed today and on previous occasions as well. But next to it are the planned GSLV-Mk3 and Mk4 rockets, which are a little shorter and wider, and thus less likely to face the same difficulties.

Perhaps ISRO should turn around this failure and make it into a success, by abandoning GSLV-Mk2 and proceeding straight to its improved successor, the GSLV-Mk3. And let's test that one with just a dummy satellite please, rather than wasting valuable expensive payloads on test flights.

CVSMurty said...

Or is the failure due to some computer virus?

Brownian Motion said...

ISRO has had a huge number of successes and for their relatively miniscule budget they do really well. Their satellites have had an enviable success rate. The PSLV is an extremely reliable launcher. Unfortunately the launcher business has an expensive learning curve.

I think that all this emotional talk is just the typical desi penchant for self loathing on display.

Arvind said...

@Brownian Motion, there is no self-loathing. I think you should answer the question raised by Harish - why isn't there a SINGLE weapon developed by the Indian establishment that is worth mentioning? And please tell me why India has to import weapons.

DRDO and ISRO exist to provide a light and sound show that establishes the greatness of the Nehru family. Anyone here remember the indoctrination in late 80s on Doordarshan? Rajiv Gandhi's quote which was repeated ad nauseam went something like this: "Agni ka safal pariskhan Bharat ki suraksha ...mahatvapurn ..."

Brownian Motion said...

@Arvind: The typical desi behavior is to use any failure as an excuse to discuss failures in other endeavors and say "we're useless, we can't get anything right". No intelligent analysis, no discussion of context, no thought basically. That's what on display here. This is an ISRO failure, not DRDO. Why are you asking me to talk about DRDO? Because you want to indulge in self loathing! Any thoughts about how this compares with other space programs? Certainly not - why that would require efforts, some thought, actual bloody work! Why not bypass all of that and look intelligent and wise by just criticizing? As an oft shown cartoon on DD used to say "short cut fataa fat" You know how that's pronounced right?
Recently the reliable Russian workhorse the Proton rocket failed dramatically. Should the Russians wind up their space program too?