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Udupi Ramachandra Rao (1932-2017) Humanitarian and Space Scientist

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Professor UR Rao. ISRO HQ on 26 August 2013

Whilst Homi Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai are rightly honoured as visionary architects of the Indian Space Programme, building and operationalising it fell to others. Key among these was Professor UR Rao who lead the team to build India’s first satellite, Aryabhata. He did it in just over two years with a small young team of engineers with zero experience. A major landmark in ISRO’s history, Aryabhata was launched in 1975 by the Soviet Union.  Just five years later he was behind the next major milestone. On the back of a successful bid for a free launch on the then experimental European launcher Ariane, he drove the project to build India’s first 3-axis stabilised communication satellite, APPLE.  That was India’s first communication satellite to operate from Geostationary orbit.

He lead ISRO as the Chairman between 1984 and 1994 but never really retired. I had the good fortune of meeting him in 2013, 2014 and 2015 in his office in ISRO HQ Bangalore where he continued to contribute to numerous projects. He had started out as a cosmic ray scientist, encouraged in part by his meeting in the early 50s with the Nobel laureate Abdus Salam. He shared stories of working with Homi Bhabha,  Robert Millikan, James van Allen,  and Vikram Sarabhai under whom he had completed his PhD.   On his desk, Rao he had a signed copy of Arthur C Clarke’s seminal Paper on “Extraterrestrial Relays” that is widely seen to have introduced the concept of communication satellites. In 1975 India was experimenting with communication satellites to deliver education to rural villages in India (the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment). He told me how India offered, probably the first private satellite TV set to (the then Sri Lanka based) Clarke but India was forced to offer one to the president of Sri Lanka too.

After completing his PhD in India Rao first worked at MIT and then in Dallas, Texas building cosmic ray instruments for NASA’s Pioneer, Mariner and Explorer spacecraft. Rao with his colleagues was waiting to meet President Kennedy in Dallas University when he was assassinated on 22nd November 1963. In 1993, in an hour-long meeting with US vice president Al Gore, Rao challenged US sanctions and secured concessions without which the IRS-1C mission would not have been able to proceed as planned.

During his time has ISRO chairman, he was instrumental directing and operationalising the now highly successful PSLV. In the late 1980s,  he initiated the next launch vehicle programme, the GSLV. Rao had developed a particularly close relationship with senior scientists, engineers and academicians in the Soviet Union. It was this relationship that allowed him to negotiate the Cryogenic engine technology transfer deal with the USSR in 1990. The USSR did not last, neither did that deal but  Rao had set ISRO on the road to developing the GSLV and the cryogenic engine technology.

During my interactions with him, I found him to be generous with his time, modest and self-effacing.  He always gave credit to his teams rather than taking it as the leader. Not only had he collected a series of awards and achievements during his lifetime but he stands out as one individual who was sincerely liked and respected not just in India but the USSR/Russia and USA. Through his work with ISRO, he was fulfilling the vision of his mentor, Vikram Sarabhai to bring the benefits of space technology to the ordinary people of India. But as the considerable body of his published work demonstrates, his ambition was more global. He sought out international collaboration at every opportunity including during his numerous interactions at the UN. In the opening to the preface of his 1996 book, Space Technology for Sustainable Development, he says “The most significant human enterprise of our century is, undoubtedly, the development and application of a space technology, which has not only revolutionised the present but holds the best promise to shape our common future”. It is not an exaggeration to say that Rao believed in space technology as an essential endeavour for the future of the planet and human civilisation.

Book Review: ISRO: A Personal History

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Title: ISRO: A Personal History
Publisher: Harper Collins India
Author: R. Aravamudan with Gita Aravamudan

A delightful personal account of India’s space program from the very beginning. With personal memories from an era that otherwise would be lost. This is an important historical record of events that will in a few years be lost entirely in living memory. It is a non-technical account written by an engineer. The co-author Gita Aravamudan’s, experience in journalism is no doubt a key factor in the succinct and easy to read the narrative style.

As expected it is the personal anecdotes that really make this a fascinating reading. The reference to “chase a chimaera” wonderfully captures the extraordinary goal Sarabhai had set for India of 1962. Aravamudan’s personal accounts of meetings and working with Sarabhai, Bhabha and Kalam. While at NASA Wallops, his meeting the engineers from Pakistan captures a unique moment when the two neighbours’ space programs were at a stage of capability.

Visits by the Dalia Lama, J.R.D Tata, confrontation with local fishermen and union disputes paint a richer picture of Thumba than I had not come across before. The first-hand account of travelling to Australia to purchase a fully functioning telemetry station has surprising twists and turns. The public display of a moon rock at Sriharikota caught the imagination of the local population who turned up in unexpectedly large numbers to view it.

During his time as a director at Sriharikota, he describes the administrative burden of managing the town-like scale of the centre. As the director, he was responsible for the operations of a school, hospital, shopping centre, mosque and a temple in addition to managing the space missions. The authors remain apolitical and consistent with similar books by former ISRO employees. Naturally, the author is proud of his contribution and occasionally exaggerating ISRO’s achievement (i.e. ISRO being the first agency withMars Orbiter Mission to succeed with orbiting Mars on the first attempt). I would have liked to have seen more about the exchanges between the Indian and Pakistani engineers when the met at Wallops.

Historians of the future will be indebted to Aravamudan and his wife for chronicling a unique episode in India’s journey as a space power.

 

Book Review : Space India 2.0

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Title: Space India 2.0

Publisher:  Observer Research Foundation

Author: Edited by Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan and Narayan Prasad

Free download from http://www.orfonline.org/research/space-india-2-0-commerce-policy-security-and-governance-perspectives/

If you are looking for a single source of current state of play with the Indian space programme from a diverse collection of writers from in and outside India – this is it.

This book is a collection of 26 chapters written by authors with expertise and first-hand experience covering a broad range of topics. The book is divided into to five themes on Space Commerce, Policy, Security, International collaboration and concludes with Sustainability & Governance. The authors include former ISRO director, academics, scientists, researchers, legal experts and some from the growing community of space start-ups.

Authors come from USA, Australia, Japan, France and Russia give a unique international perspective on the policy and evolution of the space activities in India. Each chapter is written as a standalone piece and whilst there is some repetition the varied writing styles is quite refreshing. Between them the contributors discuss the increasing commercialisation of ISRO’s operations, the growth of space start-ups, India’s new ground-based assets to aid space debris monitoring, opportunities for India-Australia collaboration, the remarkable growth of internet users in India and increasing reliance on digital services for the benefits of all of India’s 1.2 billion population.

The space security section deals with some of the most fraught and testing topics that rely on space assets. In his chapter, Ajey Lile describes India’s conventional military assets with a surprising degree of quantitative data. For example, the Indian army has 1,300,000 active personnel, 6,464 tanks and 290 self-propelled guns. This level of detail a decade ago would probably have been seen as a security breach. As a retired wing commander, Lile is likely to have the authoritative sources for this data and clearance to put this information in the public domain.  Lile highlights a mismatch between India’s space strategy, its current space assets and the political indecision on how space should be used for national defence. Similarly, in her paper, Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan addresses the changing geopolitical landscape around the potential military use of space.  She points to the absence of political and financial commitment from the Indian government which does not bode well for India’s national security in the long-term.

Kumar Abhijeet emphasises India’s need for domestic space legislation to support not only the emerging private space sector but India’s obligation to international treaties such as the Outer Space treaty. In the 1960s there were just two countries with space programs, now there are around 60. International collaboration will be key to ensuring that space around the Earth used by communication, navigation and meteorological satellites is kept free of hostile activities that have marred human history on Earth. In its own way, this compilation from international authors is an example of the collaboration essential for humanity’s eventual use and exploration of space.

This book is an interesting up to date resource with an international perspective. If you want to know all about the Indian space program, this book along with the following four will offer a pretty good wholesome picture

The best part was a bunch of new writers that I had not come across before. I expect to read more of their work in the future.  I will conclude with my usual whing regarding the absence of a back-of-the-book index and a few typos that should have been picked up during proofreading.