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Episode 91 – ISRO and the Spy who was not

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Nambi Narayan

One of the most fascinating and colourful characters associated with the Indian Space Programme is Narayan Nambi.

In 1994, Nambi Narayanan an ISRO aerospace engineer was falsely arrested by the Investigation Beuro on charges of espionage. He was accused of passing on confidential launch vehicle flight test data to foreign nationals. In 1996 he was cleared by the Central Investigations Bureau and India’s Supreme Court found him not guilty in 1998. In 2019 he was presented with India’s third-highest civilian award, the Padma Bhushan.

In 1966 he joined ISRO or INCOSPAR as it was known at that time. With the guidance and support of Vikram Sarabhai, he went to study liquid and cryogenic engine technology at Princeton in 1969. He worked on the early stages of the development of the Vikas liquid engine which now powers two of the four stages of the PSLV.

Some of the topics we discussed include:

  • During the 1960s he visited the Spadadam site near Carlisle. Today it is a Royal Airforce Station but in the 1960s it was the site used by the British Government test rocket engines and to develop Blue Streak – an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile.
  • In 1974 ISRO concluded a barter arrangement – no money changed hands. India would provide 100 man-years trained engineers. 75% of this time would towards supporting France developing their (then new)  Ariane 1 launcher and 25% would be used by India to develop the Vikas Engine with the technology transfer from France. Indian engineers would also build, test and qualify 100,000 pressure transducers for France.
  • He claims to be the architect of this unique barter arrangement. In addition to being the father and architect of the PSLV.
  • He suspects that the intelligence Beuro picked on him to slow down the Cryogenic engine development and remove him as project director.
  • Speculating on the why the Vikram lander failed to make a soft landing he thinks it may have been related to the automatic landing sequence (software) or an issue with the braking thrusters.
    He is an advocate of an Asian Space Agency lead by India.
    He believes China space programme is not ahead of India’s because India has succeeded with the Mars Orbiter Mission.
    He would like India and China to increase collaboration in space.
    In 2017, he published a book on his experiences and a film based on the book will be released in late 2019.

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Episode 89 – Carbon Nanotubes

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Gadhadar Reddy

In his 1979 novel, Fountains of Paradise, Arthur C Clarke imagines a cable stretching from the Earth’s equator to Geosynchronous orbit. He called it a “space elevator” and imagined it would be constructed from continuous pseudo-one-dimensional diamond crystals. Bangalore based NoPo Technologies is now commercially producing Carbon Nanotubes. Could this material, one day be used to construct Clarke’s space elevator?

Materials that offer high strength alongside low mass are highly sought after by the aerospace industry. In the past, it was aluminium, titanium and Carbon fibre. The new wave of materials consists of Graphene and Carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes like diamonds, soot and graphene are allotropes of Carbon. Same atomic structure but differ in physical construction.

NoPo Technologies was established in 2011 by the CEO Gadhadar Reddy and is already commercially supply Carbon Nanotubes to Japan and elsewhere.

Some of the themes we discussed include:

  • NoPo Technologies was incorporated in 2011 and is probably the only producer of Carbon Nanotubes in India at the present.
  • Carbon Nanotubes have desirable attributes of high thermal and electrical conductivity, tensile strength, resilience to radiation and are extremely lightweight.
  • Nopo Technologies commercially produce single-walled Carbon Nanotubes of about 8 nm diameter and 2000 nm long.
  • Use cases currently include lightning conductors on aircraft, insulators for cryogenic fuel tanks, black surfaces for star trackers on spacecraft and molecular scale filters that can be used for producing biological membranes or even water filters for desalination plants.

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  • NOPO Offices in Bangalore
  • Electron Microscope
  • Carbon Nanotubes
  • Anto assessing a new batch of Carbon Nanotubes
  • Manufacturing vessel
  • Raman Specrometer

New audio -Rakesh Sharma in Space speaking Russian 7th April 1984

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  • Soyuz T11 Crew

Recently two audio clips (see below) of Sharma’s broadcast have emerged. They were recorded in 1984 by Sven Grahn in Sweden. The audio clips are part of a TV broadcast transmitted on 7th April and captured over two orbits. The first clip Sharma talks about the Yoga experiments and in the second, we hear him for the first time speaking in Russian about the pictures of Indian leaders he took with him to space. He mentions the defence minister because Rakesh Sharma was a member of the Indian Airforce and had no connections with ISRO. The audio was originally recorded live by Sven Grahn and transcribed from Russian to English by Bart Hendrikx. Transcription and the audio clips below. My thanks to them both.

In 1984, Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma became the first Indian national and the 138th person to enter space. His trip into space was part of the USSR’s Interkosmos programme. During this programme, 14 non-Soviet cosmonauts travelled to the USSR’s Soyuz space station in low earth orbit stations between 1978 and 1988.

On  Tuesday, 3 April 1984, at 10:38, Rakesh Sharma with Commander Yuri Malyshev and Gennady Strekalov blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome the Soyuz T-11 spacecraft. Ten minutes later, Soyuz T-11 was in a 224 kilometre LEO on its way to dock with the space station Salyut 7. After just over a week on Wednesday 11th April Sharma returned to Earth aboard Soyuz T-10 as planned to the USSR 46 km to the east of the city of Arkalyk.

During his 8 days, Sharma conducted several observations, experiments and participated in live TV broadcasts. His first broadcast and conversation with the Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi took place on the 4th April and is well documented.

Sven Grahn and his equipment in 1974. Credit Sven Grahn.


Audio recorded in Real-time by Sven Grahn

14:45–14:50 UT 7/4/1984

Yuri Malyshev: (in Russian)

… in order not to spoil the experiment…
Yesterday, while we were flying over our country and doing experiments with our film cameras, I asked Rakesh to come to the window and look at the beautiful Kuril Islands, the volcanoes. As far as my native region is concerned, I would gladly invite Rakesh to the Volga region where I was born and to the Dnepr region where I grew up and would show him these two mighty and beautiful rivers … (inaudible)

Rakesh Sharma: (in English)

In order to conserve muscle tone as well as (inaudible). As everyone know this is due to the lack of gravity and tends to expand a bit. So for these exercises we have selected 5 (in audible) and other warming up exercises padma asana, and again we will go back and get some more readings which will then be compared before flight and after flight and then we will know. And no I have not done yoga before coming [to this] programme but that again makes me a better subject because there is no preconditioning involved. When I reached here it was without the help of yoga and I did yoga only here and therefore the results will be more interpretable.

16:20-16:24 UT 7/4/1984

Yuri Malyshev: (in Russian)

… television viewers in India and the Soviet Union. In this television report we want to talk about… (inaudible)

We have brought with us to the station pennants and flags of the Soviet Union and India, coats of arms, commemorative medals, envelopes. We are now showing you pennants made on the occasion of the joint Soviet-Indian spaceflight, diplomas. Right next to us is a medal of Gagarin made on the occasion of the 50th birth anniversary of Gagarin and awarded to the crew of the Salyut-7/Soyuz orbital complex, cosmonauts Kizim, Solovyov and Atkov. We have also brought with us symbolic items from India about which Rakesh Sharma will tell you more.

Rakesh Sharma: (in Russian)

As Yuri Malyshev already told you, these are portraits of our leaders : Mahatma Gandhi, who we call the father of the homeland, did a lot to fight colonialism, Jawaharlal Nehru, the father of Indira Gandhi, our president Zail Singh, our prime minister Indira Gandhi, who is well known, and our Defence Minister Ramaswamy Venkataraman. We have also brought the coat of arms of our Air Force, the coat of arms…. (inaudible)

Episode 77: Satellite tracking – the early days

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Sven Grahn has been working in the space field in one way or another for over fifty years. Officially retired, he continues to work as a project leader of a student satellite at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

He is perhaps best known for his work in tracking satellites launched by the secretive Soviet Union during the 1960s and 1970s.In those pre-internet days, his work along with others helped to identify individual mission characteristics such as mission types, members of the crew, take off and landing times. He recorded over 1000 conversations from orbiting spacecraft as they flew over Sweden.

In this interview, he speaks about

  • The impact of the space race on his choice of career
  • His work on sounding rockets and meteorology in Sweden and beyond
  • Satellite tracking. What he tracked, heard and recorded using radio and tape recorders.
  • How he came to research and write about the  satellite tracking conducted at Jodrell  Bank radio telescope in England

As an 11-year-old, Sven had seen Sputnik in the sky over Sweden with his own eyes. I started by asking him how the onset of the space race had impacted his choice of career?

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