From Thumba to the Moon: A coffee table book by 3 scientists traces ISRO history

‘Ever Upwards: ISRO In Images’, is a collection of more than 350 photographs, most of which have never been seen before by the public.

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The first picture is of a man bending down; the next of his house in Ahmedabad. Not a rocket, not a machine, not technology. A coffee table book on ISRO – Indian Space Research Organisation – has to begin with Vikram Sarabhai, the man who thought it up, the authors must have decided. There are three of them – PV Manoranjan Rao, BN Suresh and VP Balagangadharan. They’d brought out a book together before in 2015 – From Fishing Hamlet To Red Planet. In 2019, the year Sarabhai would have turned 100, they created a book of pictures with simple text – a visual complement to the earlier book.



Vikram Sarabhai

“The year 2019 also marks the 50th anniversary of ISRO. So this coffee table book celebrates both the anniversaries,” says 82-year-old Manoranjan Rao as he speaks to TNM, sitting at his residence in Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram. He is a space physicist and has been writing on the history of ISRO for a long time now. BN Suresh was a former director of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) and VP Balagangadharan, a former scientist at VSSC.

Ever Upwards: ISRO In Images, published by University Press, is a collection of more than 350 photographs, most of which have never been seen before by the public, curated by the three authors over the past many years.

It begins with people stories – Vikram Sarabhai, of course and then the man less spoken about – Satish Dawan.



Satish Dhawan

“Most of the people are aware about Vikram Sarabhai but not many are aware of Dhawan, who was the man who created the real structure of the ISRO that you see today,” says Dr Manoranjan, “Sarabhai laid the foundation of ISRO and Dhawan continued to build on it.”



Sarabhai with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi

From Sarabhai’s home in Ahmedabad, the story moves to Thiruvananthapuram, to the St Mary Magdalene Church in Thumba. The Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station or TERLS was built there in 1963.



Indira Gandhi at TERLS

For untold centuries, Thumba near Trivandrum had been an obscure fishing village, on the west coast of India. Little did the fisherfolk realise that their sleepy village ‘possessed’ a unique geophysical treasure.

On November 21, 1963, the first rocket took off from Thumba and TERLS was born.

Pictures show not just the rocket launch of that day, but the fishermen too, at work next to the sea. The little seen pictures the authors have painfully dug out and put in order to create a beautiful black and white world of the 1960s. The world into which modern science gently crept in, with its rocket science technology.



Fishermen at work in Thumba

As that first rocket launched, many heads turned up – a picture of boy scouts is there, among others. The authors explain the situation then – when Sarabhai launched the space initiative in India, there was no one with experience in the field, the only infrastructure was the old church, and there were few who were convinced of the benefits of space technology.



Boyscouts watch the very first rocket launch

St Mary Magdalene Church in Thumba where TERLS was built

To raise an organisation like ISRO from that would not have been easy. It was in 1965 that Sarabhai built the Space Science and Technology Centre, which later got named after him – Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, a major space research centre of ISRO. On August 15, 1969 he created ISRO. After Sarabhai passed away in his sleep in December 1971, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi chose Satish Dhawan to be the successor. Nine months later he came and did three roles at once – he was chairman of ISRO, secretary of Department of Space and chairman of Space Commission. Dhawan spoke to the press when the first flight of SLV-3 failed, and when it succeeded later, asked Abdul Kalam – then a scientist, later President of India – to speak to the press.



Indira Gandhi and Satish Dhawan

Abdul Kalam and Satish Dhawan in conversation with Manmohan Singh and others

At a time when there are a lot of discussions on India’s Chandrayaan 2 mission to the moon and the Mangalyaan to Mars, Manoranjan strongly feels that the people of the country must be aware of the roots and history of the country’s space journey and the people behind it. “The book is also a form of paying tribute to the countless engineers and scientists who worked for ISRO. The people of ISRO are its main assets,” he says with pride.



Celebrations after the success of SLV-3

Photos of these people – not just of the ISRO but the dignitaries visiting, common people of the time – are all in the 300-page book. Rockets and satellites, people and places and even the future are touched upon by the three authors.

(With inputs from Cris)