Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, our first Prime
Minister laid the foundation for the development of science and technology in
India. Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) was one such organisation
which grew into a prominent research organisation. ISRO is India’s NASA of
America. ISRO built its first satellite in 1975 with the aid from the then
USSR. The satellite was launched by Russia from Kapustin Yar using Cosmos 3M
launch vehicle. It was launched on 19thApril,
1975 and it is the 42nd anniversary of the ISRO’s first satellite
launch.
The name Aryabhata was suggested by
our first woman prime minister Indira Gandhi after the great astronomer and
mathematician Aryabhata in the fifth century. The event was celebrated by the
Reserve Bank of India and made historic by using satellite’s image on the two
rupee bank notes between 1976 and 1997. The satellite’s data receiving centre
was in Bengaluru, where a toilet was converted into a receiving centre to serve
the purpose.
The satellite’s cost was around
rupees 3 crores and was built to conduct experiments in X-ray astronomy,
aeronomics and solar physics. The space craft was twenty-six sided polyhedron
of 1.4 m in diameter. All the faces except the top and the bottom was covered
with solar cells.
The spacecraft weighed 360 kg. the
object of this project were to indigenously design and fabricate a space-worthy
satellite’s system and evaluate its performance in orbit to evolve the
methodology of conducting series of complex operations, to set up a ground
based receiving, transmitting, tracking system and to establish infrastructure
for the fabrications of the spacecraft system. After seventeen years of its
formal launch, Aryabhatare-entered earth’s atmosphere on 11thFebruary
1992.
To commemorate the event both India
and Russia released commemorative stamp and first day covers. On this day (19.04.2017)
we in India feel proud of both spacecraft and the mathematician…..
Aryabhata.
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