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Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station
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The Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) is an Indian spaceport established on 21 November 1963.Operated by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), it is located in Thumba, Thiruvananthapuram which is near the southern tip of mainland India, very close to earth's magnetic equator. It is currently used by ISRO for launching sounding rockets.
Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station
Rohini rocket.jpg
Launch of RH-300 Mk2 from TERLS
Location
Thumba, Thiruvananthapuram, India
Coordinates
8°32′34″N 76°51′32″E
Time zone
UTC+5:30 (IST)
Short name
TERLS
Established
21 November 1963; 57 years ago
Operator
ISRO
The first rockets were assembled in former St Louis High School, which houses now a space museum.The local Bishop, Rev. Peter Bernard Periera, Bishop of Trivandrum, Vincent Victor Dereere (a Belgian) and district collector Madhavan Nair were instrumental in acquiring a large parcel of land measuring 600 acres from coastal community. The Bishop Rev. Periera had given away the prayer hall and bishop's room in the local church for scientific pursuits of A. P. J. Abdul Kalam.Then Minister of State for External Affairs, Lakshmi N. Menon helped a lot in smoothing the bureaucratic hurdles before the project at Delhi.
The sounding rocket systems for the launch were loaned by NASA and payload was provided by CNES. The event did not gain the global media attention it deserved due to the Assassination of John F. Kennedy that happened in the following day.
In 1961, Vikram Sarabhai entrusted Eknath Vasant Chitnis with the task of hunting location for the space program. After visiting around 200 locations the scientist panel shortlisted on places such as Vellanathuruthu near Karunagappalli, Ezhudesam near Kanyakumari and Thumba. The magnetic equator then passed through the location near Quilon named Vellanathuruthu and Thumba was a compromise location. The difficulty in acquiring land in relatively densely populated coastal region of Kollam, lesser precipitation in Thumba, more political patronage by then Chief Minister Pattom Thanu Pillai for a location in Trivandrum, air strip facility in Trivandrum prompted the team to finally go ahead with Thumba in the meeting convened at Physical Research Laboratory in 1962.
Another reason that swung decision in favour of Thumba over Vellanathuruthu, that had water bodies on its eastern coast too (Ashtamudi Lake) was a dinner time discussion that Sarabhai had with P. R. Pisharoty. Pisharoty suggested that the Malayalam translation of Vellanathuruthu is 'White elephant sandbar' and Sarabhai was reluctant to go ahead with a place with such a name.
Thumba is a vast village bordering Menamkulam in the east, St. Dominic's Vettucaud in the north, and Kochuthura in the south; towards its west is the Arabian Sea. While the border with Menamkulam is the Parvathi Puthannaar canal, the border with Kochuthura is the Rajiv Gandhi Nagar road. The entire village is flat at sea level, and the ground near to the coast is made of tan-coloured beach sand. This is in stark contrast to the rest of the village, where the ground is made of white sand, where, till the developments of the late 1990s, large amounts of a medicinal herb with white flowers called Thumba grew in abundance, hence the name. TERLS dedicated to the United Nations on 2 February 1968.The first sounding rocket, Nike-Apache, was launched rocket on 21 Nov 1963.[2] The project director for this Sodium vapor cloud experiment was Prof. P. D. Bhavsar. The Rohini Sounding Rocket (RSR) program to develop indigenously developed and fabricated sounding rockets launched the first single-stage Rohini (RH-75) rocket (32 kg rocket with 7 kg payload to ~10 km altitude) in 1967, followed by a two-stage Rohini rocket (100 kg payload to over 320 km altitude).[3]
The first sounding rocket, Nike-Apache, was launched rocket on 21 Nov 1963.[2] The project director for this Sodium vapor cloud experiment was Prof. P. D. Bhavsar. The Rohini Sounding Rocket (RSR) program to develop indigenously developed and fabricated sounding rockets launched the first single-stage Rohini (RH-75) rocket (32 kg rocket with 7 kg payload to ~10 km altitude) in 1967, followed by a two-stage Rohini rocket (100 kg payload to over 320 km altitude).[3]Other launches:
The first sounding rocket, Nike-Apache, was launched rocket on 21 Nov 1963.[2] The project director for this Sodium vapor cloud experiment was Prof. P. D. Bhavsar. The Rohini Sounding Rocket (RSR) program to develop indigenously developed and fabricated sounding rockets launched the first single-stage Rohini (RH-75) rocket (32 kg rocket with 7 kg payload to ~10 km altitude) in 1967, followed by a two-stage Rohini rocket (100 kg payload to over 320 km altitude).[3]Other launches:Apart from Indian payload, sounding rockets from many other countries (including United States, Russia, Japan, France, Germany) were also launched from Thumba, as part of mutual international collaboration. TERLS developed infrastructure for all aspects of rocketry, ranging from rocket design, rocket propellant, rocket motor casting, integration, payload-assembly, testing, evaluation besides building subsystems like payload housing and jettisonable nose cone. Fibre-reinforced plastic composite materials for nose cone were used in early programs at TERLS.
The first sounding rocket, Nike-Apache, was launched rocket on 21 Nov 1963.[2] The project director for this Sodium vapor cloud experiment was Prof. P. D. Bhavsar. The Rohini Sounding Rocket (RSR) program to develop indigenously developed and fabricated sounding rockets launched the first single-stage Rohini (RH-75) rocket (32 kg rocket with 7 kg payload to ~10 km altitude) in 1967, followed by a two-stage Rohini rocket (100 kg payload to over 320 km altitude).[3]Other launches:Apart from Indian payload, sounding rockets from many other countries (including United States, Russia, Japan, France, Germany) were also launched from Thumba, as part of mutual international collaboration. TERLS developed infrastructure for all aspects of rocketry, ranging from rocket design, rocket propellant, rocket motor casting, integration, payload-assembly, testing, evaluation besides building subsystems like payload housing and jettisonable nose cone. Fibre-reinforced plastic composite materials for nose cone were used in early programs at TERLS.The rocket launch from TERLS came to a stand-still in 2000. Later in 2002, the rocket launchings were resumed from TERLS.[4] ISRO announced their plans to launch 180 number of RH-200 rockets from TERLS over the next five years.