Hans Jacob Frydenlund, Norway Ambassador to India.
| Photo Credit: Ragu R
On November 20, 1997, a Rohini RH-300 Mk-II sounding rocket rose to the skies from Svalbard, Norway, operationalising a brand new rocket launching vary there. The strong propellant-powered rocket was shipped from India for the launch, whereas 4 senior palms of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had been specifically flown to Norway to verify all the pieces went off all proper.
The resolve to deepen area sector ties between India and Norway following Norwegian Ambassador Hans Jacob Frydenlund’s go to to the ISRO headquarters final week presents an event to recall this difficult mission which occurred 26 years in the past at Ny-Alesund, Svalbard.
‘’The RH-300 Mk-II was given a brand new identify by the NSC (Norwegian Space Centre): Isbjorn-1, which interprets actually as ‘Polar Bear-I.’ If we love our royal Bengal tigers, they love their polar bears!’‘ ISRO veterans P. V. Manoranjan Rao and P. Radhakrishnan have recalled in their 2012 book, ‘A Brief History of Rocketry in ISRO.’
Ever since a U.S.-made Nike-Apache sounding rocket lifted off from Thumba in 1963, successfully launching the Indian area programme, Indian area scientists had been flying sounding rockets for higher atmospheric research. The RH-300 Mk-II was half of the Rohini household of sounding rockets developed by ISRO’s Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) in Thiruvananthapuram.
ISRO bagged the Norway mission after its industrial arm Antrix Corporation received a world tender floated by the Norwegian area company, remembers M. C. Dathan, who was one of the 4 ISRO palms – the others being Rohini Sounding Rocket (RSR) undertaking director Narayanan Kutty, M. Raveendran and C. Subbiah – despatched to Norway in 1997.
On the technical facet, the Norway mission offered distinctive challenges for ISRO. The Rohini rockets had until then flown solely in the tropical sizzling and humid circumstances in India. ‘‘The Svalbard archipelago, on the other hand, sits in the Arctic Ocean and temperatures were on the extremely low side,’‘ says Dr. Dathan, who was managing the solid propellant plant at VSSC back then. (Dr. Dathan later became Director, VSSC. He is presently Mentor (Science) to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan).
ISRO had shipped the RH-300 Mk-II to Norway after qualifying it for arctic weather conditions. Renamed Isbjorn-1, it lifted off at 11:07 p.m. IST on November 20, 1997. The rocket, unfortunately, did not achieve the predicted height, rising only up to 71 km. The reason was a strange one. To keep the ambient temperature at 18 degrees celsius, it was kept covered with a velostat shroud. The idea was that it would pierce through the cover during launch. Instead, the rocket dragged it along, and the increased drag resulted in a lower altitude.
‘’Nevertheless, the Norwegian scientists appeared fairly proud of the launch, for the knowledge collected throughout the flight led to some new findings. Well that’s area science!’‘ notes ‘A Brief History of Rocketry in ISRO,’ including that the launch marked a brand new period of cooperation between the two nations in area analysis.
Last week, after Ambassador Frydenlund, accompanied by officers of Kongsberg Satellite Service (KSAT), known as on ISRO chairman S. Somanath in Bengaluru, ISRO stated in a press release that ‘‘the meeting concluded with a mutual agreement on the importance of maintaining a continued partnership and fostering increased engagements between India and Norway in the field of space exploration and technology.’‘
