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Birth of the Indian Space Research Organisation

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This article was first published in the May 2022 edition of the British Interplanetary Society publication – Space Chronicles.

Three weeks after its extraordinarily ambitious mission, the crew of Apollo 11 splashed down in the North Pacific, and the Indian Space research Organisation (ISRO) came into being on 15 August 1969. At that time, it was still operating under the Department of Atomic Energy, where its predecessor, the Indian National Committee for Space Research (INCOSPAR), was founded in 1962. In the same year that the Apollo programme in the USA ended, India established the Department of Space in 1972 and brought ISRO under its management. This is the ISRO that has designed, built, launched and operates the 50-plus spacecraft of the 3500 operating in space today.

Today, its space assets provide services to its security forces, but it did not start that way. India’s space programme is probably the only national space programme that began with plans only for economic and societal development. Space programmes in the USA, USSR, China and elsewhere arose to serve a national security imperative. ISRO has met many of its original objectives for more than half a century. India’s assets in space provide services for communication, television, navigation and Earth observation. For scientific research, India has Astrosat, a space telescope in Earth orbit, Chandrayaan-2 in lunar orbit and since 2014, a spacecraft in Martian orbit. Some of India’s spacecraft provide services for the international community, including remote sensing, search & rescue and navigation for civil aviation.

One objective explicitly ruled out by its first charismatic chairman, Vikram Sarabhai, in 1969 was a human spaceflight. In 2018, India’s Prime Minister announced a new goal. Called Gaganyaan, its task is to place an Indian crew in low Earth orbit using an Indian launch vehicle launched from Indian soil by 2022. A variety of issues, especially the global pandemic, have ensured that the timeline will not be met, but the programme remains active. In January 2022, S. Somanath was appointed as Chairman. As Russia’s space activities diminish, opportunities will arise for others, and India is well placed to exploit them.  

ISRO will ramp up activities that will include the launch of OneWeb’s satellites, the inaugural flight of its Small Satellite Launch Vehicle, the second test flight of its reusable space plane, the third mission to the moon complete with a lander and a rover and a launch abort test for its Gaganyaan programme. I expect ISRO to make a significant announcement on 15th August 2022.

ISRO under lockdown

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Free online webinar from the British Interplanetary Society. 18:00 BST Friday 18th June 2021

Mission Control Centre

How has the Indian Space Program fared through the Covid-19 lockdown? In this hour long webinar including Q&A, I will offer a personal and tentative view of how India’s space activity has been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. In the webinar I will look at how ISRO:

  • has supported the Covid-19 national medical emergency
  • space missions have impacted operationally
  • strategic plans have been delayed by the pandemic
  • especially the impact on the ambitious human spaceflight program – Gaganyaan

The webinar is free but you need to register here https://www.crowdcast.io/e/isro-under-lock-down- . It will be recorded and links to the recording will be available to all who register.

I recorded an interview with two senior ISRO representatives during IAC2019 in Washington. It is a fairly good indicator of ISRO’s plans for some of its key missions then (October 2019) prior to the the Covid-19 outbreak 6 months later.

India In Space

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Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle

There are around 3000 operational satellites around Earth right now. Just over 50 were designed, built and launched from India. Collectively they provide services for communication, television, navigation and Earth observation. In the pursuit of science, India has Astrosat, a space telescope in Earth orbit, Chandrayaan-2 in lunar orbit and India’s first mission to Mars, launched in 2013 is still providing data almost a decade on.

The Indian Space programme started 21st November 1963 with the launch of the first rocket into space from Indian soil. Since then, India has developed a comprehensive infrastructure to design, build, launch and operate spacecraft in orbit. Why did India choose such a seemingly impossible path for a developing nation just a decade and a half after independence?

There are three primary reasons. First, Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India’s first prime minister, had a very clear vision of India’s future forged on the anvil of science and technology. Second, a coincidence of timing – the space age arrived (with the launch of Sputnik in 1957) on his watch. India could have chosen the road for economic development that the West had traversed since the industrial revolution, or leap headlong into the 20th century and join the space race, a race in which the West was ahead but not by very much. Third, the commitment of a few accomplished scientists and intellectually gifted who had the commitment and potential to realise Nehru’s bold ambitions of an India with a vibrant, flourishing first world economy.

India built on science and technology

Jawaharlal Nehru

Despite his public adherence to the rituals and tradition of the faith that Nehru was born into, he considered himself more a Humanist than a Hindu. In his will he declared he did not want “any religious ceremonies performed for me after my death”. He embedded his vision of a forward-looking, science based future of India in the constitution. In Article 51A of the Constitution of India, which came into effect in 1950, Nehru codified the central role of science, requiring that every citizen of India shall “develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform”.

The tradition of scientific investigation was well established in India long before the British arrived. During the three hundred years of British occupation, science conducted in India was the science that only benefited Britain. Despite these restrictions, the practice of science by Indians in India, during the colonial period, made some progress. 

Pioneers in Science

CV Raman Credit IISc

In 1894 JC Bose demonstrated the potential for radio communication by triggering an explosion of a small sample of gunpowder using radio waves.  In 1918, with Albert Einstein’s consent,  SN Bose published the first English translation of Albert Einstein’ s landmark work on General Relativity in Calcutta. Bose’s contribution is recognised in Physics today through the Bose-Einstein Condensate and the Boson.  

By the age of 42, CV Raman who had been educated and trained entirely in India, was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1924, knighted by the British government in 1929 and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930.

Origins of India’s Space Programme

In the summer of 1939, Homi Bhabha was visiting India prior to starting a new role at the University of Manchester, England. Then WW2 broke out.  Bhabha remained in India and developed the Atomic Energy Commission and in 1962 the Indian National Committee for Space Research and put Vikram Sarabhai in charge. Both Bhabha and Sarabhai came from successful business families known across India. They had also studied Physics in Cambridge. It was these connections in high society in India and amongst the international scientific community that Vikram Sarabhai exploited in growing the international collaboration that was critical for India to jut-start its space programme from a standing start.

International Collaboration

The Cold War forced many countries to choose between the democratic capital West and the Communist East. Despite the geopolitical bifurcation between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, Nehru ensured India took no side and remained Non-aligned. Sarabhai exploited this position further by attracting support for the nascent Indian space programme from USSR, France, USA and Britain. It was this step-by-step progress by which Sarabhai ensured Indian space scientists and engineers acquired hands-on experience working abroad, then built spacecraft and launch vehicles under license in India before gradually becoming fully self-reliant in space. 

The Indian Space Research Organisation was established in 1969. Today ISRO is recognised as a leading operator in space. Launched in 2007, ISRO’s Chandrayaan-1 mission to the Moon was probably the  most challenging and successful mission to date. It took place in an age before social media and does not have the recognition it deserves. It carried instruments from USA, Japan, Sweden, Bulgaria and UK. It was this mission that made the first unequal detection of huge quantities of water near the lunar south pole. ISRO today has active collaboration projects with other leading space agencies. They include:

  • Roscosmos – India announced its human spaceflight mission Gaganyaan in 2018. Russia’s space agency Roscosmos has been providing astronaut training for four Indian astronauts since 2019. The first crew carrying flight could take place in 2022.
  • NASA – NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR). A global Synthetic Aperture Radar mission to  study changes in glaciers and other hazards such as sea level rises. To be launched in 2022.
  • JAXA – Lunar Polar Exploration Mission (LUPEX)A joint India-Japan mission to the South pole of the Moon. Japan to provide the launcher and rover and India would contribute the lunar lander (that will carry the rover to the surface). Currently scheduled for 2024.
  • India also plays a part on the global stage by participating in (a) United Nations Inter-Agency Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) with an objective to mitigate space debris generated by member agencies (b) comply with international law as a signatory to the 1967 The Outer Space Treaty, (c) provide transponders in GEO and LEO satellites to support  satellite-based international search and rescue (COSPAS-SARSAT) service (d) Voluntarily engage in data sharing with other space faring nations using the Multi-Object Tracking Radar based at Sriharikota

Space programmes around the world have been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. ISRO has been impacted more than the most. Globally, 102 space launches were conducted in 2019, six of which were from India. This year, out of a global total of 114, India conducted two. During the space race of the 1960s between USA and USSR, an advance by one side triggered a response from the other. In 2019, China with  34 launches was ahead. In 2020 it was second with 39 launches. India will no doubt increase its launch cadence in 2021.

Coming Soon

Mars. Credit Isro

In addition to its recent success navigation constellation NAViC, science mission and progress with the Human Spaceflight programme, ISRO is actively pursuing additional objectives. In 2021 ISRO will conduct its first commercial launch of its Small Satellite Launch Vehicle,  the second launch of the Reusable Launch Vehicle and another attempt to land on the Moon with Chandrayaan-3.

Before the middle of the current decade, ISRO will have launched  the first Indian astronauts to reach Earth orbit using an Indian launch vehicle from Indian soil,  a solar probe to observe the Sun – Aditya-L1, a second mission to Mars – Manglayaan-2 and the first mission to Venus – Shukrayaan-1.

First published in the March-April 2021 edition of Gyan Vitaranam

Stephen Smith and Leslie Johnson. Development of rockets during the 1930s and letters from Calcutta to Liverpool

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Stephen Smith with two of his rockets. Sikkim 1935, Credit Leslie Johnson

I came across the Liverpool/Calcutta connection during my research into the life and work of Stephen H Smith. During 1934 and 1944, Smith undertook around 300 rocket experiments to demonstrate the utility of a rocket to transport mail, medicines, food and living creatures. Similar experiments were being conducted in Germany, Austria, Netherlands and the USA, but in India, for over a decade it was just Smith.

The British Interplanetary Society had been founded in Liverpool in 1933. Smith conducted his first rocket experiments in September 1934 and it was published in the BIS Bulletin in November 1934. Smith in Calcutta joined the BIS around this time and established regular correspondence with the Leslie Johnson, the BIS secretary, in Liverpool. Johnson’s daughter still has a file of letters Smith sent from Calcutta to Liverpool in the late 1930s.

My book (India’s Forgotten Rocket Pioneer) will be published by the end of March 2020 and contains many pictures of Smith, his rockets and quotes from his letters. Some from the Johnson collection but other sources too.I could not include many in the book – so I am sharing some more here. Click on any of the images below to open the gallery viewer.


  • Smith conducted his first rocket mail experiment on 30 September 1934. It appeared in the November 1934 issue of the BIS Bulletin.
    Credit National Air and Space Museum. Washington DC

  • In the early 1930s, the founders of  nascent rocketry societies (Phil Cleator of the BIS in UK and Edward Pendray of the AIS in USA) were swapping notes on the work on rocketry being conducted by Smith and Goddard. Goddard’s contribution was incomparable to that of Smith’s.
    3 April 1936  From Phil Cleater to Edward Pendray.  Credit National Air and Space Museum. Washington DC 
  • To help raise funds and raise the BIS profile, members could purchase BIS headed paper to use as “Member’s correspondence”. Smith used it widely especially when communicating with the media to assert his credentials. He also used it to write one of his many letters to Leslie Johnson in Liverpool.
    29 September 1937 Members Correspondence with BIS logo. Credit Leslie Johnson

  • Stephen Smith (sitting bottom left) in Calcutta with a mostly obscured rocket launch frame for his rockets behind him. 
    22 July 1938.  Credit Ramu M Srinivasa

  • Soon after the BIS was founded in Liverpool, the Manchester Interplanetary Society was established in nearby Manchester. Headed by Eric Burgess, it did not last long and was later subsumed in to the BIS when it was reformed after the World War II in London. The MIS was just as ambitius as the BIS and published a journal called The Astronaut. 
    August 1938 – Manchester Interplanetary Society’s journal – The Astronaut.  Credit National Air and Space Museum. Washington DC.

  •  7 November 1949. Stephen Smith to Robert Paganini. Transcript below.

    “You may mention that I have been working on these tests for over 12 years  and that my work and experiments were increasingly more and (more) until the war when the military wrote to me on numerous occasions for aid. Tell him that I was India’s Pioneer Rocket experimenter and that I am an Indian by birth, having been born in Shillong, Assam. You may mention that I have done work in the Himalayas and that my efforts have been recognised  in the USA and the whole of Europe and yet I’m the land of my birth I am ignored and last though not least, thousands of my rocket mail letters, cards and stamps are scattered around the world. If his excellency the governor, Dr Katju should be interested he should send for me for a private discussion on a field of experiments now occupying the world.  Thank you my good friend, thank you a thousand times and god bless you for your great kindness to me.” 
    7 November 1949. Credit Robert Paganini collection. Museum of Communication, Bern Switzerland.

  •   2 March 1950 From Stephen Smith to Robert Paganini
     Smith complaining that he has not received a response from any senior politicians including Prime Minister Nehru. “I have not heard a line from H.E. Dr Katju or Dr B. L Roy or Pandit Nehru. They will not have anything to do with anyone, except one who is an India. This is life.” 
      2 March 1950 Credit Robert Paganini collection. Museum of Communication, Bern Switzerland. 
  • Smith hints at an “offer of his services” but cannot tell anyone.
    6 April 1946 from Stephen Smith to Robert Paganini    . Credit Robert Paganini collection. Museum of Communication, Bern Switzerland

  • Extract from Robert Paganini’s will. Paganini died on 6 December 1950. He left a quarter of his estate to Stephen Smith – someone he had never met. Smith himself died three months later.
    Credit Robert Paganini collection. Museum of Communication, Bern Switzerland.