Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle

Chapter I
Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle: History

Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle or PSLV is an expendable rocket system designed solely in India
by Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and is operational since 1993. It was the great leap
in the rocket launch and development capability of India and its continuous success is reason, to
expect more from India in future. With the recent extraordinary success in the Lunar unmanned
missions and putting a satellite in the orbit of Mars, Mangalayaan, is in itself an epitome of success
for Indian Space research.

When India started its space program USA was already on its Moon mission in 1969 via Apollo
Mission. ISRO was officially established on 15th August, 1969 superseding Indian National
Committee for Space Research (INCOSPAR). ISRO works under the Department of Space,
Government of India. Although it started late, ISRO was quick to grasp the grip of Space research
around the world and start on a totally new level. It was just before the Shuttle Program started
that the first Indian satellite was put in orbit by an Indian made launch vehicle (Satellite Launch
vehicle-3). The reason for this comparison between the NASA’s projects is made to keep in mind
the late start of the Indian Space Program and yet so much has been achieved successfully. India
is the first country to be successful in its maiden inter planetary mission to Mars (Mangalayaan)
and also achieve the goal of the cheap space launch system and missions. NASA had one of its
founding goals to reduce the costs of space missions but it struggles to meet that goals whereas
India is marching ahead in this area with a record cheap mission without any compromise in the
Quality or Safety.
PSLV is one of the most successful Space launch vehicle of the world till date, with only two
failures since its maiden flight on 20th September 1993. PSLV holds a world record of launching
104 satellites in a single launch in 2016, beating Russia. Today success of PSLV is tried to be
emulated by various Space agencies of the world. Till date there have been 43 launches of PSLV.

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ISRO has launched more than 200 foreign satellites. This number indicates that the credibility of
ISRO as a satellite launching agency with greater success rates and lower costs over other notable
space agencies. This is a great reason to be proud of for India but all this great work is in vain if
we fail to understand the market of world and its needs. In the future, as we look, it is clear that
commercial flights to space for satellites, probes, manned laboratories for ISS, cargo carriage to
Space Laboratories, fuel supplies to rovers, and repairs of all the stuff in space will be in a great
demand. If we were to capture this market and have our strong hold, it would be the most beneficial
enterprise for India. We are going to discuss at length the possibilities to tap the soul of this
growing market and the ways to increase our capabilities to stand there. We will give our own
recommendations for upgrading the PSLV and how, with minimal inputs can we get maximum
output.

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Chapter II
Technical Details of current PSLV

Weight: 294,000 kg
Height: 44.4 m.
Diameter: 2.8m
Stages : 4
Payload -
1600 kg. in 620 km Polar Orbit
1060 kg. in GTO
Total Launches:43
Success : 40
Failure : 2
Partial failure:1
Initial Thrust: 4430 kN (booster thrust; largest solid fuel rocket booster in world) 6 Strap-On
motors, each having 677kN of thrust

Fuel Type: Alternate Solid and Liquid Fuel propellant

Solid Fuel: hydroxy terminated polybutadiene (HTBP)
Liquid Fuel: unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine and nitrogen tetraoxide as oxidizer

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Chapter III
Current Scenario of Space Research and Exploration

With the advent of ISS and Shuttle Missions there has been a increased awareness of the Space
Exploration among the general masses. With the ISS being built from the scratch, bit by bit, piece
by piece, and today it flies above the Earth with humans in orbit every second of the day. It has
fuel supplies and other cargo supplies to use. With the conclusion of Shuttle mission, given their
failure rates and costs, it was concluded that unmanned satellites can fulfill the purpose of cargo
supplies and cheap alternate missions like Soyuz can fulfill the purpose of human transportation.
There have been continued explorations of the Cosmos via various probes traversing the deep,
dark space, and the increased demand of satellite transmissions of signals have given a lot more
reason for research in this field. Almost all the Space Agencies around the world have been trying
a long time to find something concrete to end the problem of efficient transport to space. Another
aspect which is generally forgotten is the repairs and replacement of satellites put in orbit already.
When the space race started between former USSR and USA their main aim was a efficient and
deadly rocket for carrying the nuclear warheads to far distance which later culminated into putting
objects in space and rest all is history. Today we are so belittling the use of rockets and its
importance that we do not even spare a thought to the techniques and ingenuity involved in its
development. Its a controlled explosion basically and when we muster technique to conquer
something like that, it must not go unnoticed and development in that field should continue.
While there exists rockets around the world that were considered best but for the lack of R&D it
has been a stagnant technology and with this fast moving world it has become obsolete. India on
the other hand with its PSLV program made a enormous progress and gained a high stature on the
international stage.
The demands that are going to be in the near future are of putting space labs in orbit, GPS satellites,
weather satellites, remote sensing and imaging and the Defense Projects etc. With the increase
payload capacity and credibility of the PSLV and ISRO in the commercial circles, the day is not
far when ISRO will stand as equal or maybe more than NASA in stature.

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Chapter IV
Modifications Proposed

The current PSLV rocket is capable of sending the satellites unto the weight of 1200 Kgs. in sun
synchronous orbits around earth. The rocket system currently uses 4 stages of alternate solid liquid
fuel propellant and 6 strap-on motors during launch for pitch/yaw control.
It must also be noted that PSLV has been a fairly 100% successful mission as first flight was more
of a test flight and was unsuccessful for the following reasons.
It was due to a error in the software of the third stage auto-pilot. There was an altitude disturbance
while the movement and separations from 2nd stage to the 3rd stage of the rocket causing the
altitude commands to exceed values and with the error in the software the wrong commands could
not be checked and the pitch control failed leading to the failure of achieving orbit. Later the
Rocket crashed in Bay of Bengal after 700 seconds into flight. Later the problem was traced back
to the retro rocket which had to provide the necessary thrust for the separation of 3rd stage rocket
from the spent 2nd stage. This retro rocket gave the disturbance and lead to the failure of the
launch. From this failed mission ISRO had many things to learn. All its other systems operated
optimally like aerodynamics, propulsion, navigation etc. With the changes incorporated from the
failure of first flight ISRO had its successful 2nd flight to put IRS-P2 successfully in orbit. Later
in its fourth launch, its first operational flight C1, there was a partial failure as the required orbit
level was not reached by the rocket, leaving the satellite short of its orbit which was later propelled
up to its desired orbit using its own fuel. The problem occurred because of the leak of Helium gas
which was used for pressurizing the liquid propellant of the fourth stage, rendering the fuel useless.
The reduced fuel pressure means that the fuel is no longer good to use in the engines which use
pressurized mixture of gases. This gave the onboard computers to have an impression that the fuel
is exhausted and led to the release of payload in a lower orbit. Considering that the satellite was
not harmed it should be kept in a successful missions.
While we had look at the past and then successfully executed 25 missions to the space including
some of the famous payloads like Mars Orbiter Mission and Chandrayaan (Lunar Orbiter). We
have learnt a great deal form out past in this field and we continue to develop more. With the
GSLV under test and GSLV MK-III under development we have high hopes from ISRO in the
commercial usage and exploitation of the market to put payloads of different clients in space.

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As for the modifications that we suggest are as follows:-

 The current fuel propulsion system of alternate solid and liquid stages must be changed to a
newer approach of having a 3 staged rocket with only one stage of solid rocket boosters and
rest two being liquid fuel stage coupled with increased capacity strap-on rocket motors. With
the increase in the initial thrust the use of the thrust in higher stages will be reduced and this
will reduce the weight and increase the space for payload in the rocket. This will increase the
efficiency of the rocket manifold.

 A bold idea must be adopted in the rocket development if it has to be commercial in its
application. With every launch employing the use of a new rocket is not very efficient system
and neither is a very environment friendly way as every time new rocket requires metals and
other natural resources. So a system of reusable rocket body must be employed. This kind of
system is currently in practice in shuttle missions in its solid rocket boosters (SRB’s) which
are recovered after every launch from the Pacific Ocean. The same technique can be employed
in PSLV and to use the Bay of Bengal and India Ocean for recover of the used rocket. This
will help a lot in improvement of efficiency and reduction of costs.

 The weight of the craft in itself is a great thing to be worried about. To reduce this weight a
hybrid material is to be developed. Currently simple alloys are used which provide either heat
protection or strength but with the research in material sciences it is possible to come up with
a material that is capable of handling high stresses and temperatures apart from being
lightweight. These materials must be able to tolerate high stresses at higher altitudes at high
velocities and acceleration. These must also support the reusable approach towards rockets as
discussed earlier.

 The launching site must be changed to support easy launch system. The current air boundaries
and sea boundaries of Sri Lanka influence the flights initial launch maneuvers which makes
the PSLV lose some of its precious time and fuel leading to a approximately 500 kgs. of
payload loss. If by a MoU Sri Lanka gives the permission, we can significantly increase our
capacity without any technical changes in the rocket design.

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Chapter V
International Relations for Commercial Purpose

All of the listed modifications are of no use until and unless there is a potential market for the
service that we provide or if we are not able to tap the market potential in time. If we see the current
scenario, number of commercial launches is increasing and luckily for India, the countries are
interested towards a cheaper and reliable option that we provide but this should not mean we don’t
have to innovate. By innovation only we will be able to stay in this ever increasing profitable
market. The first step towards this would be to give a message to the world that India is
independent in terms of its technologies and is not dependent on any country for its supplies of
technological expertise. We must carry out our independent research in astronomy, Physics,
Mathematics, astro-Physics and other fields that help the development of the rocket in India. This
will instill a sense of confidence in the clients that the rocket taking their precious payload is a
work of original ingenuity and not a assembly product with parts taken from various different
places which may or may not be compatible with each other.
Next step will be setting up facilities and a setup on the lines of Jet Propulsion Laboratory-CalTech
by NASA. This is a novel mechanism to include the best of college in the direct missions of NASA
and have their novel and unique ideas in motion without any delay. The graduates, post-doctoral
fellows are handling Mars Rovers and many other important live missions in space for NASA and
analyzing data’s from over a dozens of unmanned probes including Kepler, Voyager-1,2 and many
other. If such a facility is developed in India under the aegis of ISRO and Govt. of India. This will
be great impetus for students to pursue higher studies in India and not look towards NASA and
other international space agencies for jobs. It may be noted here that more than half of NASA’s
technical staff is of Indian origin. This clearly speaks for the talent present in our country, we just
need to tap that talent. We must also call upon various internationally acclaimed scientist and
colleges to have their researches in our facilities.
The next step would be to have missions like Mars Orbiter Mission and Mangalayaan beyond Mars
to moons of Jupiter and Saturn and explore Titan and IO which have many mysteries to be solved.
These missions will give some valuable contribution to the knowledge of the space and give an
impetus to valuable research in India and ISRO will have its name in limelight for such important
missions. All these missions will prove that ISRO is capable of greater skills than what the world
expects, and this will instill confidence among clients to trust ISRO with their satellites.
Another important thing to be kept in mind is the flexibility towards different needs of the client.
If we are flexible then we can expect our client base to expand as everyone has different needs and
payloads and depending on those needs we will have to change our payload space from time to
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time. One thing which is the current USP of PSLV series is its cheap launch, this must be
maintained as it is to keep the USP in our hand.

Apart from the above listed methods there could be other methodology that can be employed to
make better use of the market and get the best out of it. These were only some basic suggestions
to make sure better development environment is provided for attracting the clients from around
the world.
With the comparison being made with the Maven of NASA and Mars Orbiter Mission of ISRO, it
must be noted that the missions and aims of the two missions are completely different. While for
NASA it is sophisticated measurements and data relay systems for its rover missions and its other
satellites already in orbit of Mars, for ISRO it was a maiden attempt towards interplanetary mission
with only basic equipment being sent to test the functioning of equipment and control systems in
space from the available technical ground support. While both countries were in for a different
goals, making comparisons for costs and time are irrelevant and vague and don't have valid base
and logic behind them. A rather logical inquisition would be to compare the first missions of
NASA to Mars or to interplanetary regions and that of other space agencies to different planets or
heavenly bodies. In such a comparisons, success in maiden attempt gives ISRO an easy win.
If there are to be any future plans ISRO must think it through and execute it with some
improvements in the designs of the initial rocket boosters for a heavier probe with greater scientific
instruments and facilities on it. The adoption of a completely new Rocket system will not be totally
bad but going on with PSLV will help and PSLV is capable enough to handle this amount of cargo.
But as the demands may be in future a new rocket can be put to use and its development can be
started now.

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Chapter VI
Conclusion

With the ideas and suggestions listed above in the study it is clear that ISRO will have great and
important role to play in the future of space exploration and rocket development. PSLV today is
its greatest weapon/asset to showcase around the world, the development and current scenario of
Indian research. NASA is a body which is into existence since long time and has been given a lot
of grants and has best technical experts with them, whereas on the other hand ISRO is politically
influenced in its choices and lacks good research facilities.
It must also be noted that development of a newer rocket system must be on the charts but the
current PSLV must not be discarded completely and important experiences from its flights and
machines must be taken from it and used in the future flights.
The GSLV and GSLV MK-II, III under development are going to be the successors of the PSLV
age of rockets. With such rockets in India’s fleet it will be very easy for us to have our monopoly
over the expanding market.
It is maybe hard to compete with Space agency like NASA and to expand your market but it is not
impossible. We must strive hard to make this happen and play our crucial role in achieving all this.
By continuous hard work one day ISRO will become one of the best space agency and not one of
the best but rather ‘The Best”

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References

• www.isro.org
• http://www.isro.org/pslv-c19/Imagegallery/launchvehicle.aspx
• http://www.isro.org/launchvehicles/PSLV/pslv.aspx
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Space_Research_Organisation
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_Satellite_Launch_Vehicle#Planned_launches
• www.hal-india.com/Aerospace/products.asp
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expendable_launch_system
• http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl1612/16120370.htm
• http://www.spaceflight101.com/pslv-launch-vehicle-information.html

• www.spacelaunchreport.com/pslv.html#config

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