The ‘Other’ Space Race

India launching its first sounding rocket was only a small step. Vikram Sarabhai dreamt big: He wanted India to waste no time in building and launching our own rockets, satellites and satellite launching vehicles. But we still had no expertise or resources for any of it. Sarabhai finds a way and for that, India enters the ‘other’ space race. As India raced to the finish line, it gained a key ally but lost two others.

Show Notes

All clips and voices used in this podcast are owned by the original creators.

We thank wholeheartedly all our guests who appeared on this episode.

• Asif Siddiqi
• Pramod Kale
• CNR Rao

References

• ISRO and Vikram Sarabhai during it’s early years – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2S_9RRbK0Q
• World Mourns Nehru (1964) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pcR3eceOf4
• Nehru’s Last Journey: Indian Prime Minister’s Final Wish (1964) | British Pathé – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tnIYM-qF40
• Film on Dr Homi Bhabha by TIFR marking his birth centenary in 2009 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6GEGOvXh4g
• Death At The Summit (1966) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezMSJ5CKpn0

Full Transcript of Episode 5 –

It’s a busy evening on the beach of a coastal town facing the Arabian sea. A group of scientists and engineers are getting ready to launch their first rocket. And there is nervous energy all around.

A long and sleek sounding rocket stands on the launch pad with its nose pointed towards the night skies. As the clock nears ten minutes to eight, a barrage of announcements are made to clear the launch site.

A countdown begins.

The ebb and flow of the sea nearby has a steady hum to it — almost as if the sea is counting down seconds as well. 

The tension is palpable. 

All eyes . . . are on the rocket.

At the appointed time, and in the blink of an eye, the rocket obediently zooms towards the skies.

And the ground it just left behind erupts in applause and cheers.

THIS sounds a lot like the rocket launch in Thumba, doesn’t it?

It isn’t.

This IS the subcontinent’s first rocket launch … but it wasn’t on Indian soil. 

This happened on June 7, 1962, more than a year before India’s first rocket launch. And it happened on the beach of a small coastal town called Sonmiani (Soan-my-aani) overlooking the Arabian sea in Pakistan.

Yes, you heard that right. The first sounding rocket of the subcontinent was launched not by India but by Pakistan, in a town that is located around 60 kilometres from Karachi. In fact, between India and Pakistan, the first country to start a space programme was actually Pakistan. 

Pakistan’s first sounding rocket even had a name: Rehbar the first. Rehbar is Urdu for ‘One Who Leads The Way’ and Pakistan quite literally at this point in time in the subcontinent’s history, was leading the way when it came to space.

Rehbar the first was a Nike Cajun (kay-jun) rocket unlike the Nike Apache (Apa-Chay) rocket that we launched from Thumba more than a year later. It carried a sodium vapour payload weighing about 80 kgs. And like in Thumba, the release of the sodium vapour cloud left a luminous trail in the Pakistani skies.

And that wasn’t all. 

Four days after Rehbar I’s launch, Pakistani scientists launched Rehbar II, another sounding rocket. With these two rocket launches, Pakistan became the third country in Asia and the tenth in the world to conduct a successful space rocket launch. 

In India, in the meantime, Sarabhai and team were still searching for an ideal launch site for the Indian space programme.

But if this was the scorecard between India and Pakistan in 1962, the situation, in the next five years, would be completely reversed, with India eventually leading the way and Pakistan’s space programme gradually receding to the background.

So, what happened here? Why did a country that did so well in the power plays, fade away in the middle overs? What did India do that tilted the odds in its favour? And what happened to Pakistan’s space programme eventually?

I’ll tell you this story in a bit. Let’s just say that there really never was a dull moment between India and Pakistan: whether it was on the cricket ground or in the outer reaches of space.

From ATS Studio, this is Mission ISRO, a Spotify Original podcast about how India reached space.

I’m Harsha Bhogle.

Recap

In our previous episode, I told you about the launch of India’s first sounding rocket in Thumba. The launch was the seminal moment of the Indian space programme and was an international collaboration involving countries like USA, France and to a small extent, the USSR.

The American space agency, NASA, played a huge role in making the launch happen. NASA trained our scientists and gave us our first rockets. The French supplied the payload for one of our experiments and the Soviets gave us a computer among other scientific equipment.

India located an ideal launch site near the magnetic equator. Thumba was by no means a ready-made launch site — it was a fishing village which was turned into a space portal by our scientists and engineers in no time.

On November 21, 1963, by launching our first sounding rocket, the space programme had finally begun.

But now what? How did we move forward?

Here we go

There’s a business concept that Vikram Sarabhai was particularly drawn to. It is called “leapfrogging”. 

Developing countries don’t always need to follow the exact path taken by developed and industrial countries in their pursuit of growth. To save precious time, they could instead skip a few stages or leapfrog and catch up sooner.

Asif Siddiqi
This was a very common perspective among a lot of development theorists in the 60s in the West also,  who believed that quick path to development for many developing countries was a kind of leapfrog philosophy.

This is space historian Asif Siddiqi. 

So how does a country “leapfrog”?

Asif Siddiqi
So you acquire, or at least there’s some sort of technology transfer from the west, a very highly cutting edge advanced technology that is embedded in new society, developing societies and somehow that sort of enables and encourages development.

Sarabhai and Bhabha had in fact already attempted some leapfrogging by getting NASA to collaborate with India for the launch of sounding rockets. They had also convinced the Americans to send a few rockets to India for the first launch.

But a sounding rocket launch was only a small first step. The vision that both Sarabhai and Bhabha had for the Indian space programme was far more vast and ambitious. Right from the start, they were clear that India was going to develop an indigenous space programme which meant that India will gain the capacity to build and launch its own rockets, satellites and satellite launching vehicles. 

Moreover, by 1963, Sarabhai had no intention to do this step by step. That is, he did not want India to first build rockets, then graduate to building satellites and then the satellite launching vehicles.

He was clear that it was all going to be done simultaneously, building on the knowledge that other space powers in the world had already gained in these technologies.

Leapfrogging. 

He felt that it was the only way for India to catch up.

But how was this going to be possible?

There were many huge challenges here. For one, India’s first space scientists weren’t well-versed with space technology. And technological transfer in the field of space was not going to be easy. Countries were secretive about sharing space technology because they were worried that it would be used to develop missiles and weapons. 

This was the Cold War era after all. 

India also did not have the money to acquire satellites or rockets from other countries. Sure, Bhabha managed to convince the US to send a few Nike Apaches to India that one time. But for the space programme that Bhabha and Sarabhai had in mind, a far bigger strategy had to be devised.

And here’s where the story gets riveting. Sarabhai had some new tricks up his sleeves again.

Let’s go back to 1958.

After the launch of Sputnik, at the height of the space race and the Cold War, the militarisation of space was becoming a real concern. The United Nations was keen to do its bit to promote peace.

So it set up a committee for the peaceful uses of outer space or COPUOS (Koh-pas). It had 28 members including India. 

Now, sometime around the early 1960s, this committee adopted an important resolution. It decided that the UN would actively help countries in peaceful projects related to space. It would encourage research on outer space and provide assistance to national space research programmes.

Now, while India was part of the COPUOS it wasn’t just any member. Vikram Sarabhai ensured that we were an active participant in the committee’s meetings and he was also himself a part of one of the sub-committees. By now, it shouldn’t surprise you that he was here too. He was pretty much an all-rounder, if you ask me. 🙂 

Asif Siddiqi says that it was Sarbhai’s stature in international networks of science, especially in cosmic ray physics, that made him a weighty name in the UN circles.

Anyway, Siddiqi in his research, found out that through this UN sub-committee, Sarabhai orchestrated an important project that would benefit India immensely.

In the summer of 1962, he got the UN to consider establishing an international rocket launching facility near the equator. And, for this plan, he seemed to have the support of the Americans who wielded considerable influence in the COPUOS. The entire proposal was framed as a US proposal but its architect seemed to be Sarabhai.

The argument for this UN project was simple  – an international rocket launching facility near the equator will help fill up the gap in the research of the upper atmosphere, the earth’s magnetic field and the ionosphere, among other aspects. A launch site near the magnetic equator, as we know, is perfect for this kind of study. 

Asif Siddiqi
And then as an as a representative of independent India, he also offers Thumba as one of the options.

Of course, he does.

What a clever idea. Yes, an international facility would plug gaps in research. But such a facility could also help India leapfrog its way into space.

How? If a UN sponsored international rocket launching facility is established in India, then countries from across the world would come and conduct their experiments and studies at the site. This would give India the opportunity to become a space hub or atleast a sounding rocket hub and most importantly, give Indian scientists the opportunity to learn how to build rockets by watching others and through trial and error.

A brilliant strategy if you ask me. You need not spend years chasing other countries for help – they would instead come to you.

Siddiqi also found out that Sarabhai framed the terms of the UN sponsorship cleverly. And here I’ll read out from Siddiqi’s research paper: The proposal said that the operating costs of the launch facility will be paid by users and not the host. The responsibility for managing and operating the range would be delegated to the host nation. This means, the host nation, India, would in effect have jurisdiction over all equipment brought to the range by foreign partners on their own coin. And most critically, ‘the host State should be free to request technical assistance for the facility from all United Nations agencies.”

Asif Siddiqi
You know, let’s say the Germans want to launch a rocket.They have to.. there’s no money exchanged in all of this, they bring their equipment to Thumba. And so there’s a kind of an interesting arrangement of, but a lot of the equipment is actually left behind. But, and, secondly, look, you know, sort of Indian engineers also see a lot of this global technology sort of circulating in Thumba. So there’s a kind of interesting impact of this. But the second point I want to mention about Thumba is that ultimately, even though it’s a global site, under UN sponsorship, I think.. well, because it’s a global site under UN sponsorship, it also insulates people who might think for example, well, why are we cow-towing to the Americans? Why are Americans allowed to come to India with the rockets? I think Sarabhai could say, well, this is a UN project, you know, it’s, it’s a, it’s for peace, it’s for world. So for the good of the world, it’s not a strategic alliance with America, or Russia or anybody. And I think that was a very clever strategy to sort of not put it in terms of geopolitical Cold War terms, but in terms of the United Nations. 

All of this was just perfect for a country like India where the space programme was always beset by concerns over resources.

But the question was — will the UN agree to this proposal?

What’s interesting is — as soon as the UN started discussing Sarabhai’s idea, other countries in the equatorial region also began vying for the sponsorship. They wanted to be the one to host this international facility in their respective countries.

Including … a critical neighbour of ours.

Asif Siddiqi
Certainly Pakistan was in the running, but also Brazil, Argentina and a number of Latin American countries were — because they were they also had a very appropriate sites they could offer in the equator. So and they also were post colonial natio- well in the in sort of up and coming nation so to speak after World War II they were trying to industrialise and become more advanced. So there’s a lot of international sort of competition.

Pakistan, as we now know, started a space programme even before India. So it was well-placed to offer to be the host of this proposed UN facility. It was also one of the first to collaborate with NASA when it opened its doors for international cooperation. Way before India did the same.

Asif Siddiqi
When you start looking at the documentation from the early 60s, you see that Pakistan was really at the one of the very first countries to take up this offer with NASA, right after the UK and a few other European countries. And this is partly because of you may know Abdus Salam who was a physicist in Pakistan, who was quite well known at the time. And he sort of spearheaded this effort.

Mohammed Abdus Salam was a renowned and incredibly accomplished Pakistani physicist. Like Bhabha and Sarabhai, he also went to Cambridge and got his PhD in theoretical physics from the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge. In his tribute to Salam, Munir Ahmad Khan, the former chairman of Pakistan’s Atomic Energy Commission writes that at Cambridge, Salam was challenged to solve an impossibly tough problem related to meson theory which had stumped great minds like Paul Dirac and Richard Feynman. And Salam solved it in six months! 

Anyway, around 1960, Salam returned to Pakistan and this part of his life story sounds very similar to that of Sarabhai and Bhabha in India. Salam became the scientific advisor to the government. And soon after, he started Pakistan’s space programme by setting up the Upper Atmosphere and Space Research Committee or SUPARCO (Su-par-ko). When Sarabhai was negotiating the UN project in 1962, the Pakistani space programme had a clear head-start when compared to India.

There is little doubt that Bhabha, Sarabhai and Salam would have been well versed with each other’s work.

So, Pakistan was one of the contenders for the UN sponsorship, and among the other contenders were Brazil and Argentina — both countries had started modest space programmes in their country in 1960 – again, like Pakistan, a couple of years before India. 

Now even as these countries had already decided to throw their hat in the ring for this sponsorship, the UN was still considering whether to offer such a project in the first place.

Finally, in December 1962, the UN General Assembly voted on the proposal and passed a resolution that officially announced that it would sponsor a sounding rocket facility on the geomagnetic equator.

The question was which country would bag this sponsorship.

Sarabhai’s plan could completely backfire for India. What if the sponsorship went to Pakistan or Brazil or Argentina?

Here’s where both Sarabhai’s stature and influence as well as his ability to move strategically would help India. Sarabhai knew how to build the right allies.

Asif Siddiqi
He knew who to talk to, he knew how to get allies. You know, for example, one of his allies was Jacques Blamont, who was a French scientist who you may have heard about, was also very influential. And he brought Blamont to Thumba and he said, you know, we we can offer this better than anybody else. And Blamont was very influential in the UN Committee. He was influential in all sorts of places. So he knew the right kind of people to ally with.

And then there was some blatant political strategizing as well. In August 1962, months before the UN would even officially announce that it was going to sponsor an international facility, Nehru made a speech in India’s parliament.

Asif Siddiqi
It must have been Nehru who made a statement that you know, that India’s being considered for this grand international sort of rocket launch site. Before the even the decision is made, and I think that’s, that also –those kinds of statements were internationally circulated in a way that suggested that India was maybe in first place in terms of the competition.

Nehru basically told the Indian parliament that India has already agreed to have a rocket launching station in Thumba under the UN. Siddiqi has accessed internal NASA documents that show that by mid-August, India had contacted the UN Secretary-General to establish the UN-sponsored facility in India. Then in September, BM Chakravarty, an Indian delegate at the UN again told the UN that India was and I quote “generously” going to offer to host the UN facility. 

UN’s decision, however, was still up in the air. 

Siddiqi writes that almost a year later, in June 1963, Pakistan, at a meeting of the Committee for Space Research or, COSPAR which was a UN scientific body on space, said that it would like to be the host country for the UN facility. 

India, at this time, was months away from launching its first sounding rocket. But Sarabhai had not forgotten about the UN proposal. Through the government of India, he kept pushing for India to be the host country for the international facility.

As a member state of COPUOS, India brought up this proposal multiple times that year. Pakistan was then not a member state and didn’t have a voice within COPUOS which was the decision taking body. Speeches made in 1962 and 1963 in COPUOS show that both Brazil and Argentina were far too slow to push their proposals.

Helping this was the fact that India was in touch with the US, USSR and France for its sounding rocket programmes – and so, these influential countries supported India’s initiative in COPUOS. 

Finally, the Indian delegation even went a step further and invited members of the UN to inspect the facilities in Thumba and then take a decision.

And the UN agreed. A few months after India had launched its first sounding rocket, a six-member team from the UN came to check out Thumba. One among the six in the team was Sarabhai’s friend Jacques Blamont. 

What a risky move. Thumba had barely any facilities back then. And when I say barely, I mean it quite literally. 

If you were an Indian space scientist in the 1960s, this was how you went to work. Pramod Kale tells us.

Pramod Kale
The first time when I had gone to Thumba – at that particular time we found out that yes, the rocket launching station was very very large rocket launching place. We were staying in the city in Trivandrum, we used to go there by the ST Bus up to the periphery and from there, we had to walk to go inside. Later on, once the roads started getting built up and all other things — in 1963 for the first time, we had only one jeep that was available, we didn’t have any other vehicle other than the jeep which was there. Next time in 1964, after the first rocket launch was over and then we were getting ready for the next one — when I went there, I had sent a message there that I’m going to be there for at least 15 days or so, but I need to be mobile. So, please hire a bicycle for me. So they had hired a bicycle for me from the village.

Scientists in Thumba had made the church building their office. Cowsheds doubled up as laboratories and to make up for the lack of infrastructure, they had even resorted to the popular Indian strategy of jugaad.

For instance, when our scientists realised they needed a spark free vehicle to transport rockets with propellants inside them …

Pramod Kale
So when you have to transport the rocket with a propellant in it and all other things, we needed a spark-free vehicle and we didn’t have a spark-free vehicle, we had a tractor which was diesel operated. So we knew that it will not have any electrical spark but still it had the starter and all other things and the trailer. But, bullock cart was the best solution and that’s how we had used a bullock cart. 
Yeah it was jugaad..because we had to find a solution very quickly, because even if we had to look for that kind of a vehicle, we wouldn’t have found it in Trivandrum anywhere else — a spark-free vehicle, if we had decided….whatever was available, we had to improvise on it.

Despite all of this, the UN team seemed to have still favoured Thumba over the other countries. 

Was it because Thumba was located close to the magnetic equator? 

Asif Siddiqi
Thumba was also a good location in Kerala, but the Pakistani location was also quite advantageous. It was close to, because of certain kind of launch range limitations. And the Pakistanis also offered all sorts of perks in terms of infrastructure and this and that it was near Karachi. 

What Siddiqi thinks tilted the odds in India’s favour was Sarabhai again. He was simply far too influential in the international circles.

Asif Siddiqi
There’s subtle things that Sarabhai did. He is very, very…we shouldn’t underestimate his ability to work the system, which is what he did. He was very, very strategic and, and incredibly, I think a genius in terms of the puzzle and the pieces he put forward to make this happen. It didn’t just happen by accident. 

After the UN delegation visited India in January 1964, things seemed to be in India’s favour but COPUOS still had to make a final decision.

But because Sarabhai had managed to rally support for India from the American, the Soviet, the UK and the Australian delegations in the UN, they supported the idea of giving sponsorship to Thumba in the meetings. 

Pakistan’s proposal doesn’t even feature in COPUOS’s discussions.

Asif Siddiqi
But ultimately, I think what Abdus Salam couldn’t do, which Sarabhai did was at the Abdus Salam didn’t have the sort of international ability to really mobilise in favour of Pakistan. And I think, for better or for worse, I think the 1965 War was also impacted the decision negatively against Pakistan. 

Slowly, but surely, the dream of three men – Sarabhai, Bhabha and Nehru – was taking root. In barely seven years, India’s nascent space programme was finding its space in the global stage. 

Here’s Sarabhai himself summarising the significance of this moment.

Vikram Sarabhai
It is not accidental that on the soil of India, that great space powers the United States, the USSR and france are collaborating with us at the equatorial range in Thumba and even the United Nations sponsorship of this range is not merely a matter of form but constitutes an umbrella under which regardless of political differences, nations can collaborate in the peaceful uses of outerspace.

As significant as this moment was, unfortunately, there was little time for a wholesome celebration 

Tragedy struck soon. 

News Announcement
India had lost her (word unclear). That’s how millions felt as premier Nehru lay dead. Priests came to the Prime Minister’s residence to chant prayers expressive of a nation in grief.Jawaharlal Nehru, the chief minister of his country since India became independent, died at the age of 74. Neither on the political stage nor in moral stature was his leadership ever challenged

On 27th May, 1964, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru passed away. For two years, his health had been on the decline. On May 26, 1964, he went to sleep around 11.30 – the usual time — but in the morning when he woke up, he began complaining of some pain in the back. 

The death of India’s first Prime Minister was announced to the Parliament in the afternoon. Lee Hall, writing for Life Magazine, said that the announcement was made with the words 

The Light 

Is Out. 

News Announcement
At New Delhi railway station, Pandit Nehru’s two grandsons carry the ashes of India’s last leader to the special train. It is to take those ashes on their final journey to the family home in Allahabad. 

Men and women who knew him, who worked with him, who loved him, pay their last respects to the earth, for a (word unclear) Nehru who has come home. This is not the end of the journey. The end is at the Sangam, the spot where the Jamuna and the Saraswati rivers joined the stream of the sacred Ganges.

It was Pandit Nehru’s own wish. In his will, he wrote, I make this request that my ashes be thrown in to the Ganges at Allahabad, it will be carried to the great ocean that washes India’s shore.

With Nehru’s death, as India lost its leading light, Sarabhai and the Indian Space programme too had lost their most important ally. And out of the three audacious men who dared to dream of space, one was gone.

More than a year after Nehru’s death, the UN officially announced the sponsorship to the International Rocket Launching facility in Thumba. At the 20th session of the UN General Assembly in December 1965, a resolution was passed announcing the sponsorship.

It is tempting to wonder what would have happened if the UN sponsorship had gone to any of the other contenders in the fray.

Asif Siddiqi
So what if it didn’t happen? And I think my guess is that you know, it’s hard to say, of course, because, you know, I think that of course, Dr. Sarabhai, Bhabha and all these other guys were, they were resourceful. They would have figured out something else. I’m not sure. 

If the Thumba thing had gone to another country, for example, Pakistan, I think it would have really changed the equation here, in ways that we cannot imagine. For example, you know, nobody really thinks about Argentina as a kind of spacefaring nation, but they had a very, very sophisticated sounding rocket programme for many years and they still do. Brazil too. Of course, Brazil has many different space centres now. But I think if, if there, if either of those countries had this kind of backup from the United Nations, it’s possible to imagine a different kind of more aggressive, robust Space Programme from we might be hearing about an Argentinian Space Programme now. So I think I don’t want to underestimate the what happened because of the UN sponsorship. The way the UN brought so many countries to India and I forgot the Japanese Of course. So this was truly a global learning centre for many, many people, especially young Indian engineers who were able to see all this stuff. It’s a kind of school, you know, and so that schooling was really important to jumpstart what happened in the ’70s. And if this school had been some other country, you know, I don’t know exactly, but I think we see a different path for India perhaps a longer path.

Pakistan’s space programme, for example, took a different route over the years. Pakistan’s unravelling as a space agency is reflective of the tumultuous period in its political leadership and priorities. In 1974, Abdus Salam – Pakistan’s greatest scientist and institution builder – left Pakistan after the Ahmadiyas, a community he belonged to, were declared non-Muslims and religiously persecuted. 

Salam would even go on to win the Nobel prize five years later.

Pakistan’s space programme since then has been led by generals, while India’s was led by scientists of repute. Eventually, Pakistan put its resources in the atomic bomb project – sidelining the pakistani space agency altogether. 

Currently, SUPARCO hopes to make and launch its own satellite under the Mission 2040 project, which will be nearly 60 years after India launched its first satellite. 

In many ways, Pakistan’s space journey symbolises what happens when a country reorients its scientific aspirations for military or ideological goals. 

Independent India, however, was fortunate in the environment it sought to give science. The Constitution lists the development of scientific temper as a fundamental duty. Nehru once famously said that scientific institutions, among others, were temples of modern India. 

Vikram Sarabhai and Homi Bhabha thrived in such an environment, which venerated them in equal measure. The two of them also made a fantastic team.

In fact, in a way, Sarabhai was following Bhabha’s footsteps or benefiting from the foundation that Bhabha had built. 

Before Sarabhai, Bhabha played a key role in ensuring scientific aspirations were supported by the government. He was also a strong advocate of the idea that scientific institutions and programmes should be led by men of science and not bureaucrats. And Nehru agreed with that. 

Bhabha was a powerful man standing at the intersection of politics and science. He was, as we know, the scientific advisor to the government and had a direct line to the Prime Minister himself.

So, it was no accident that in 1961, when the space programme got its official nod from the government of India, it was first placed within the jurisdiction of the Department of Atomic Energy or the DAE, headed by Bhabha.

There was another reason why the space programme was placed in the DAE’s shadow. It had become a very influential and affluent scientific department by this time. By the 1960s, India’s atomic energy programme was gaining reputation in the world and the credit for this too goes to Bhabha’s incredible genius. 

Homi Bhabha laid the foundation for the atomic energy programme first

by setting up the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, then through the Atomic Energy commission which later became the Department of Atomic Energy. He did all of this at a time when again, the prevailing opinion was that it was an audacious idea for India to even think of an atomic energy programme.

CNR Rao
How did he think of that in 1951 when India was a very poor country, had nothing to offer in terms of money, facilities for most scientists 

This is eminent scientist Professor CNR Rao speaking about Bhabha’s farsightedness in a short film made on Bhabha’s centenary.

CNR Rao
Even the space programme is a derivative of Bhabha’s thinking. Bhabha knew the importance of both big science and small science. He built accelerators and reactors on one side. And then he built a TIFR and other places to do what you call small science.

So, apart from the fact that Bhabha and Sarabhai were the best of friends, this was another reason to tie the departments of space and nuclear energy together. Going to Space was going to be risky and expensive — the DAE, could therefore help provide all the crucial support that it might need. 

Then there was yet another reason why it made sense for the DAE to offer shade to the space programme. By the 1960s, the DAE already had ongoing international collaborations which made it easier again, when the space programme wanted to forge them. 

So, that’s the thing — witnessing the story of how India began and structured its space programme is like watching pieces of a puzzle being put together. And this was a unique and challenging puzzle to crack.

A few pieces of the puzzle were contributed by the world, a few by India and a few others by forces of serendipity. Some were arranged by Nehru, some by Bhabha and some by Sarabhai.

But on January 24, 1966, Bhabha was on his way to attend a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, when …

News Announcement
High on the roof of Europe, only a few feet below the summit of Mont Blanc, a 117 people met sudden death. The monarch of the alps in a few awesome seconds snatched its victims when it was barely light. Those, a 117 men and women crashed into eternity. The Boeing 707 from India splintered into a trail of wreckage for a thousand yards. What a frightening place to die.

Homi Jehangir Bhabha was on this plane and among the dead. 

The official reason for the crash was said to be a human error. However, after Bhabha’s death, there were many conspiracy theories that suggested that the CIA was involved and this was their ploy to paralyse the nuclear programme which was headed by Bhabha. 

Vikram Sarabhai and the space programme had now lost its second ally as well. Broken hearted, the Space programme would now have to move forward solely on Vikram Sarabhai’s shoulders. The space journey was long and arduous and there were so many pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that were yet to be found. 

Only Sarabhai was left to finish it all.