The fight for Rice 'AND' Rocket

At the young age of sixteen, India aimed for the stars with its first rocket launch ‘Rohini-1’. A project in collaboration with NASA and in association with the USSR, Yes, You read that right. It’s a story involving the brilliance of a man, the hard work of a team, and an audacious dream of a young nation. 

Vikram Sarabhai, the founding father of Indian space programs, always dreamt of using space technology to help young India progress on the path of development. In an attempt to do so, Sarabhai proposed to start space programs in India. Mind you, ISRO wasn’t established till then. He decided to start these programs with a sounding rocket. Now, India had a geographical advantage over here. Its closeness to the magnetic equator provides an extra thrust during the launch. Sarabhai decided to utilize this geographical advantage and got NASA on board to be part of this mission.

A rocket from rohini series

In this joint venture, NASA agreed to give its rocket for the launch, and India’s job was to find a suitable launch location. This led to the foundation of the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) in a small fishing village named ‘Thumba’ close to Thiruvananthapuram. An ideal location for low-altitude, upper atmosphere, and ionosphere studies. It’s an obligation to mention here about the residents of thumba who understood nothing about what these scientists were up to but still gave up their homeland in the name of ‘greater good’.

Rohini-1 was a sounding rocket. Sounding rockets are suborbital rockets used to probe the upper atmospheric region. The objective of this mission was to conduct two experiments, to study the upper atmosphere using sodium vapor payload and to study electrojets using a magnetometer.  

Returning to the story, the USA chose its NIKE-APACHE for the launch, a two-staged rocket that could travel up to a height of 150 to 170 km. Now having both the launching site and the rockets, we were set for the launch. But were we? No, to conduct the experiments, we needed a magnetometer and sodium payload, Not to mention we couldn’t afford it. Sarabhai was again the man to rely on. Through his vast networks of connections, he arranged the magnetometer from Prof Laurence, who worked at the University of Hamshire, and the sodium payload from France, that too for free. Seeing these efforts made by India to establish a launch site near the magnetic equator, the soviets also pitched in. They offered a VUKH-7, a testing facility that helps the scientist to test the payload, a digital computer known as MINSK-2, and a helicopter MI-4. But was this just a generous help or an attempt to negate the efforts of their arch-rival USA to get India on their side? It hardly matters; India was making headway toward the start of its space journey.

Finally, on November 21, 1963, following a few hiccups, at 6:25 pm, the rocket soared towards the sky, engraving the dawn of Indian space programs. Years of hard work had finally paid off. The scientists were overcome with joy. India had head started its journey toward an era of scientific feats and achievements. However, the joy wasn’t shared by everybody; the next day, a newspaper wrote, ‘ We need rice, not rocket’. Though It didn’t affect our scientists, and India went on to launch its indigenous rocket in 1969.

-Ishita Agarwal (MS19072)