Tag: GSLV

NYT’s profile of India’s space startup scene

The New York Times published a ‘profile’ of the Indian spaceflight startup scene on July 4. The article is typical in that: a) by virtue of being published by one of the world’s most-read news outlets, it can only be a big boost to the actors in its narrative, in this case a few Indian startups; and b) it takes a superficial outside-in view that flattens complex issues and misses finer points that, to local observers, would change the meanings of some sentences in important ways.

By and large, the article seems like a swing in the opposite direction from that distasteful cartoon in 2014 – even if there is still that note of surprise, and that fixation on ISRO doing things at a lower cost, overlooking that it has not infrequently come at the expense of lower efficiency on many fronts. Then again, the article’s protagonists are the space startups, and I’m sincerely excited about their work.

In this post, I want to point out one issue that I think The New York Times could have fixed before publishing: the word “heavy” has been used in a confusing way in the article even if it’s been used only twice. First (emphasis added):

As ISRO … makes room for new private players, it shares with them a profitable legacy. Its spaceport, on the coastal island of Sriharikota, is near the Equator and suitable for launches into different orbital levels. The government agency’s “workhorse” rocket is one of the world’s most reliable for heavy loads. With a success rate of almost 95 percent, it has halved the cost of insurance for a satellite — making India one of the most competitive launch sites in the world.

In the launch-vehicle sector, the word ‘heavy’ has a specific meaning and can’t be used directly in its colloquial sense. The “workhorse” referred to here is obviously the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), which, like the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), is classified as a medium-lift launch vehicle. ‘Medium-lift’ means being able to lift 2-20 tonnes to the low-earth orbit (LEO). This in turn implies that the article’s (first) use of “heavy” means just colloquially heavy. The second use creates the confusion (emphasis added):

It was Elon Musk who stole India’s — and the world’s — thunder on the space business. His company, SpaceX, and its relaunchable rockets brought down the cost of sending heavy objects into orbit so much that India could not compete. Even today, from American spaceports at $6,500 per kilogram, SpaceX’s launches are the cheapest anywhere.

One could think that since both the PSLV and SpaceX’s reusable launch vehicle, Falcon 9, lift “heavy” payloads, they have the same capacity, affirmed by the line that SpaceX stole India’s thunder. This is not true: Falcon 9 (in the Block 5 configuration currently in use) can lift 22.8 tonnes to the LEO and 8.3 tonnes to the higher geostationary transfer orbit; the PSLV can manage only 1.4 tonnes to the latter.

A clarifying quote follows:

“We are more like a cab,” Mr. Chandana [of Skyroot] said. His company charges higher rates for smaller-payload launches, whereas SpaceX “is more like a bus or a train, where they take all their passengers and put them in one destination,” he said.

Given the masses involved, the PSLV was always a “cab” compared to the Falcon 9. In fact, ISRO is currently working on its own reusable launch vehicle with a payload capacity of around 20 tonnes to the LEO and an expected mass-to-orbit cost of $4,000/kg, down from around $20,000 today. This thing, whenever it is ready, will create an actual opportunity for thunder-stealing on either side (it has already been considerably delayed).

There are many other niggles that, as I said, I won’t get into, but I must say that I’m very curious why “pharmaceuticals” has been singled out here, together with “information technology”:

An image of India’s first satellite graced the two-rupee note until 1995. Then for a while India paid less attention to its space ambitions, with young researchers focused on more tangible developments in information technology and pharmaceuticals. Now India is not only the world’s most populous country but also its fastest-growing large economy and a thriving center of innovation.

What is this secret revolution that I’ve missed, a revolution that, by implication, contributed to the country’s economic position today? Perhaps it’s generic drugs – but it pales in comparison to the growth of the IT sector and there has been no indication that it was led by “young researchers”. So, curious…

Finding trash in the dumpster

Just as there’s no merit in writing a piece that is confused and incomplete, there’s no merit in digging through a dumpster and complaining that there’s trash. However, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt when The Quint publishes something as ass-backwards as this article, titled ‘SpaceX or ISRO, Who’s Winning the Race to Space?’, in a time when finally, at long fucking last, people are beginning to wake up to the idea that ISRO’s and SpaceX’s responsibilities are just different.

In fact, the author of this article seems (temporarily) aware of this distinction, writing, “You have to understand, both ISRO and SpaceX are different entities with different resources at their disposal and ultimately different goals”, even as he makes the comparison anyway. This is immature, irresponsible journalism (if that), worse than the Sisyphean he-said-she-said variety if only because the ‘he’ in this case is the author himself.

But more importantly, against the backdrop of the I&B ministry’s guidelines on combating fake news that were released, and then retracted, earlier today, I briefly wondered whether this Quint piece could be considered fake news. A friend quickly disabused me of the idea by pointing out that this isn’t exactly news, doesn’t contain factual mistakes and doesn’t seem to have malicious intent. All valid points. However, I’m still not sure I agree… My reasons:

1. News is information that is new, contemporary and in the public interest. While the last two parameters can be defined somewhat objectively, novelty can and is frequently subjective. Often, it also extends to certain demographic groups within a population, such as readers of the 18-24 age group, for whom a bit of information that’s old for others is new.

2. The article doesn’t contain factual mistakes but the relationships the author defines between various facts are wrong and untrue. There are also assumptions made in the article (dissected below) that make the author sound stupid more than anything else. One does have the freedom of expression but journalists and publishers also have a responsibility to be… well, responsible.

3. You can make rational decisions only when you know everything there is to know apropos said decisions. So when you deliberately ignore certain details that would render an argument meaningless just so you can make the argument yourself, that’s malice. Especially when you then click the ‘publish’ button and watch as a clump of irrational clutch of sememes reaches 19,000 people in 18 hours.

So to me, this article is fake news.

Here’s another locus: according to Dictionary.com, fake news is

false news stories, often of a sensational nature, created to be widely shared online for the purpose of generating ad revenue via web traffic or discrediting a public figure, political movement, company, etc.

The Quint article is sensational. It claims ISRO and SpaceX can’t be compared but goes on to make the comparison anyway. Why? Traffic, visibility and revenue (through ads on The Quint‘s pages). It’s textual faff that wastes the reader’s time, forces others to spend time correcting the irrational beliefs that will take root in people’s minds as a result of reading the article, and it’s just asinine of The Quint to lend itself as a platform for such endeavours. It’s the sort of thing we frequently blame the male protagonists in Indian films for: spending 150 minutes realising his mistakes.

But again, I do apologise for whining that there’s trash in the dumpster. (Aside: A recent headline in Esquire had just the term for journalism-done-bad – ‘trash avalanche’.)

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I must dissect the article. It’s an addiction!

India’s premier space agency Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has built a reputation for launching rockets into space at very convenient prices. The consequent effect?

A lot of customers from around the world have come flocking to avail India’s economical rocket-launching services and this has helped the country make some extra bucks from its space exploration program.

Extra bucks, eh?

However, it’s a pretty competitive space.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has had a decent run in the past couple of days and the recent successful launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket has paved the way for launching heavy satellites into space.

You don’t say…

SpaceX and ISRO are competitors of sorts in the business of commercial satellite launches. The question is, how big of a threat is SpaceX to India’s space agency?

Wrong + 🚩

Okay, first some facts.

That’s kind of you.

ISRO is an experienced campaigner in the field of space exploration as it’s been launching rockets into space since as early as 1975. From sending India’s first satellite into space (Aryabhata), to successfully launching some of the most historic missions like Chandrayaan-1 (2008) and Mangalyaan (2013), ISRO has done it all.

You should check out some of the stuff NASA, JAXA and ESA have done. ISRO really hasn’t done it all – and neither have NASA, JAXA and ESA.

ISRO has carried out a total of 96 spacecraft missions, which involve 66 launch missions.

Apart from the above, it has various other goals, ranging from maintaining the communication satellite constellation around the Earth to sending manned missions into space. Not easy by any means.

Not easy to have goals? Have you seen the todo lists of most people?

Meanwhile, SpaceX is the new kid on the block and really isn’t a big space exploration agency (at least not as big as ISRO).

That’s a comparison 🚩

SpaceX was founded in 2002 by maverick entrepreneur Elon Musk with an aim to provide economically efficient ways to launch satellites and also colonise Mars!
Overall, since SpaceX’s first mission in June, 2010, rockets from the Falcon 9 family have been launched 51 times, out of which 49 have been successful. That’s a 96 percent success rate!

So, in terms of experience, SpaceX still has some catching up to do. But in terms of success rate, it’s tough to beat at 96 percent.

Do you know that if I launch one rocket successfully, I’ll have a success rate of 100%?

SpaceX is a privately-owned enterprise and is funded by big companies like Google and Fidelity. According to a Forbes, SpaceX is valued at more than $20 billion (Rs 13.035 crore) as of December 2017.

That’s Rs 1.3 lakh crore, not Rs 13.035 crore.

ISRO on the other hand is a state-owned entity and is run and controlled by the Government of India. Each year, the agency is allocated a certain part of the nation’s budget. For the year 2018-19, the Centre has allocated Rs 8,936 crore to the space organisation.

There is also a big difference in terms of cost per mission. For example, the Falcon 9 launch vehicle’s cost per launch comes up to $62 million, while ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) costs roughly $15 million per launch.

Why are you comparing the mission costs of one rocket that can carry 10,000+ kg to the LEO to a rocket that can carry 3,800 kg to the LEO? Obviously the former is going to be costlier!

The size of the payloads are different as the Falcon 9 carries much heavier bulk than India’s rockets.

Dear author: please mention that this fact renders the comparison in your previous line meaningless. At least refrain from using terms like “big difference”.

Currently, India makes very less on commercial missions as most of them carry small or nano-satellites. Between 2013 and 2015, ISRO charged an average of $3 million per satellite. That’s peanuts compared to a SpaceX launch, which costs $60 million.

First: Antrix, not ISRO, charges $3 million per satellite. Second: By not discussing payload mass and orbital injection specifications, he’s withholding information that will make this “peanuts” juxtaposition illogical. Third: ISRO and SpaceX operate out of different economies – a point incumbent ISRO chairman K. Sivan has emphasised – leading to different costing (e.g. have you considered labour cost?). Finally, source of data?

According to a 2016 report, India’s premier space agency earned a revenue of around Rs 230 crore through commercial launch services, which is about 0.6 percent of the global launch services market.

India is still to make big ‘moolah’ from their launches as small satellites don’t pull in a lot of money as compared to bigger ones.

That last bit – does the Department of Space know you’re feeling this way? Because if they did, they might not go ahead with building the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV). So that’s another 🚩

Despite the fact that ISRO is considered competition for Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the business of commercial satellite launches,

Although this claim is bandied about in the press, I doubt it’s true given the differences in payload capacities, costs to space and launch frequencies of the PSLV/GSLV and the Falcon 9.

he doesn’t shy away from acknowledging how he is “impressed” by India’s frugal methods of conducting successful launch missions.

Is this a big deal? Or are you awed that India’s efforts are being lauded by a white man of the west?

Last year in February, India launched 104 satellites into space using a single rocket, which really caught Musk’s attention. This is a world record that India holds till date.

If that’s not impressive enough, India also launched it’s Mars probe (Mangalyaan) in 2014 which cost less than what it cost to make the Hollywood movie “The Martian”. Ironical?

It’s not “impressive enough”. It’s not ironic.

You have to understand, both ISRO and SpaceX are different entities with different resources at their disposal and ultimately different goals. But again, if Musk is impressed, it means ISRO has hit it out of the park.

But if Musk hadn’t been impressed, then ISRO would’ve continued to be a failure in your eyes, of course.

I am not going to pick a winner because of a lot of reasons. One of them is that I like both of them.

ISRO and SpaceX must both be so relieved.

SpaceX is a 15-year-old company, which has made heavy-lift reusable launch vehicle, while ISRO is a 40-year-old organisation making inroads into the medium-lift category; Not to mention it also has a billion other things to take care of (including working on reusable rockets).

Since the objective of both these organisations is to make frugal space missions possible, it’s no doubt that ISRO has the lead in this race.

How exactly? 🤔 Also, if we shouldn’t be comparing ISRO and SpaceX, how’re they in the same race?

Yes, there is a lot that SpaceX can learn from what India has achieved till now, but that can work both ways, considering the technology SpaceX is using is much more advanced. But in the end one cannot deny the fact that SpaceX is all about launching rockets and getting them back to Earth in one piece, not making satellites.

Moon mission pushed to October, so we wait

So, the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO’s) Chandrayaan 2 mission to the Moon has been pushed to October from April. Delays of this sort are to be expected for missions of this scale, although I’ve also heard that ISRO often does a poor job of setting realistic launch dates for its missions in general.

The actual launch window for Chandrayaan 2 had been April-November, but recent reports in the media quoting ISRO officials had created the impression that people were confident April would be it.

But now, with the announcement of delay, officials’ confidence on display earlier this year that the launch would happen in April is now in serious question. The most recent media report I can find that quotes a senior official saying Chandrayaan 2 will be launched in April is dated February 16, 2018. The primary Google search result still says “April 2018”.

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I also find it curious that the mission’s delay was announced barely 30 or so days before it was slated to launch instead of much earlier. For missions of this size, delays can be anticipated sooner… unless something unexpected has happened. Has it? No clue. Is it because of the probe itself or the launcher, a GSLV Mk II? Again, no clue.

So we do what we always have: wait.

Mission readiness is one thing but setting realistic launch dates, communicating them to the public in a timely manner and keeping all stakeholders – including the people – informed of the reasons for delay are quite another.

Featured image credit: fernandozhiminaicela/pixabay.

Is it so blasphemous to think ISRO ought not to be compared to other space agencies?

ISRO is one of those few public sector organisations in India that actually do well and are (relatively) free of bureaucratic interference. Perhaps it was only a matter of time before we latched on to its success and even started projecting our yearning to be the “world’s best” upon it – whether or not it chose to be in a particular enterprise. I’m not sure if asserting the latter or not affects ISRO (of course not, who am I kidding) but its exposition is a way to understand what ISRO might be thinking, and what might be the best way to interpret and judge its efforts.

So last evening, I wrote and published an article on The Wire titled ‘Apples and Oranges: Why ISRO Rockets Aren’t Comparable to Falcons or Arianes‘. Gist: PSLV/GSLV can’t be compared to the rockets they’re usually compared to (Proton, Falcon 9, Ariane 5) because:

  1. PSLV is low-lift, the three foreign rockets are medium- to -heavy-lift; in fact, each of them can lift at least 1,000 kg more to the GTO than the GSLV Mk-III will be able to
  2. PSLV is cheaper to launch (and probably the Mk-III too) but this is only in terms of the rocket’s cost. The price of launching a kilogram on the rocket is thought to be higher
  3. PSLV and GSLV were both conceived in the 1970s and 1980s to meet India’s demands; they were never built to compete internationally like the Falcon 9 or the Ariane 5
  4. ISRO’s biggest source of income is the Indian government; Arianespace and SpaceX depend on the market and launch contracts from the EU and the US

While spelling out any of these points, never was I thinking that ISRO was inferior to the rest. My goal was to describe a different kind of pride, one that didn’t rest on comparisons but drew its significance from the idea that it was self-fulfilling. This is something I’ve tried to do before as well, for example with one of the ASTROSAT instruments as well as with ASTROSAT itself.

In fact, when discussing #3, it became quite apparent to me (thanks to the books I was quoting from) that comparing PSLV/GSLV with foreign rockets was almost fallacious. The PSLV was born out of a proposal Vikram Sarabhai drew up, before he died in 1970, to launch satellites into polar Sun-synchronous orbits – a need that became acute when ISRO began to develop its first remote-sensing satellites. The GSLV was born when ISRO realised the importance of its multipurpose INSAT satellites and the need to have a homegrown launcher for them.

Twitter, however, disagreed – often vehemently. While there’s no point discussing what the trolls had to say, all of the feedback I received there, as well as on comments on The Wire, seemed intent ISRO would have to be competing with foreign players and that simply was the best. (We moderate comments on The Wire, but in this case, I’m inclined to disapprove even the politely phrased ones because they’re just missing the point.) And this is exactly what I was trying to dispel through my article, so either I haven’t done my job well or there’s no swaying some people as to what ISRO ought to be doing.

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We’re not the BPO of the space industry nor is there a higher or lower from where we’re standing. And we don’t get the job done at a lower cost than F9 or A5 because, hey, completely different launch scenarios.

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Again, the same mistake. Don’t compare! At this point, I began to wonder if people were simply taking one look at the headline and going “Yay/Ugh, another comparison”. And I’m also pretty sure that this isn’t a social/political-spectrum thing. Quite a few comments I received were from people I know are liberal, progressive, leftist, etc., and they all said what this person ↑ had to say.

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Compete? Grab market? What else? Colonise Mars? Send probes to Jupiter? Provide internet to Africa? Save the world?

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Now you’re comparing the engines of two different kinds of rockets. Dear tweeter: the PSLV uses alternating solid and liquid fuel motors; the Falcon 9 uses a semi-cryogenic engine (like the SCE-200 ISRO is trying to develop). Do you remember how many failures we’ve had of the cryogenic engine? It’s a complex device to build and operate, so you need to make concessions for it in its first few years of use.

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“If [make comparison] why you want comparison?” After I’ve made point by [said comparison]: “Let ISRO do its thing.” Well done.

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This tweet was from a friend – who I knew for a fact was also trying to establish that Indian and foreign launchers are incomparable in that they are not meant to be compared. But I think it’s also an example of how the narrative has become skewed, often expressed only in terms of a hierarchy of engineering capabilities and market share, and not in terms of self-fulfilment. And in many other situations, this might have been a simple fact to state. In the one we’re discussing, however, words have become awfully polarised, twisted. Now, it seems, “different” means “crap”, “good” means nothing and “record” means “good”.

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Comments like this, representative of a whole bunch of them I received all of last evening, seem tinged with an inferiority complex, that we once launched sounding rockets carried on bicycles and now we’re doing things you – YOU – ought to be jealous of. And if you aren’t, and if you disagree that C37 was a huge deal, off you go with the rocket the next time!

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The Times of India even had a cartoon to celebrate the C37 launch: it mocked the New York Times‘s attempt to mock ISRO when the Mars Orbiter Mission injected itself into an orbit around the red planet on September 27, 2014. The NYT cartoon had, in the first place, been a cheap shot; now, TOI is just saying cheap shots are a legitimate way of expressing something. It never was. Moreover, the cartoons also made a mess of what it means to be elite – and disrupted conversations about whether there ought to be such a designation at all.

As for comments on The Wire:

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Obviously this is going to get the cut.

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As it happens, this one is going to get the cut, too.

I do think the media shares a large chunk of the blame when it comes to how ISRO is perceived. News portals, newspapers, TV channels, etc., have all fed the ISRO hype over the years: here, after all, was a PSU that was performing well, so let’s give it a leg up. In the process, the room for criticising ISRO shrank and has almost completely disappeared today. The organisation has morphed into a beacon of excellence that can do no wrong, attracting jingo-moths to fawn upon its light.

We spared it the criticisms (offered with civility, that is) that would have shaped the people’s perception of the many aspects of a space programme: political, social, cultural, etc. At the same time, it is also an organisation that hasn’t bothered with public outreach much and this works backwards. Media commentaries seem to bounce off its stony edifice with no effect. In all, it’s an interesting space in which to be engaged, as a researcher or even as an enthusiast, but I will say I did like it better when the trolls were not interested in what ISRO was up to.

Featured image credit: dlr_de/Flickr, CC BY 2.0.

And the GSLV flew!

The Copernican
January 6, 2014

Congratulations, ISRO, for successfully launching the GSLV-D5 (and the GSAT-14 satellite with it) on January 5. Even as I write this, ISRO has put out an update on its website: “First orbit raising operation of GSAT-14 is successfully completed by firing the Apogee Motor for 3,134 seconds on Jan 06, 2014.”

With this launch comes the third success in eight launches of the GSLV program since 2001, and the first success with the indigenously developed cryogenic rocket-engine. As The Hindu reported, use of this technology widens India’s launch capability to include 2-2.5 tonne satellites. This propels India into becoming a cost-effective port for launching heavier satellites, not just lighter ones as before.

The GSLV-D5 (which stands for ‘developmental flight 5′) is a variant of the GSLV Mark II rocket, the successor to the GSLV Mark I. Both these rockets have three stages: solid, liquid and cryogenic. The solid stage possesses the design heritage of the American Nike-Apache engine; the liquid stage, of the French Vulcain engine. The third cryogenic upper stage was developed at the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre, Tamil Nadu—ISRO’s counterpart of NASA’s JPL.

There is a significant difference of capability based on which engines are used. ISRO’s other more successful launch vehicle, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), uses four stages: alternating solid and liquid ones. Its payload capacity to the geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), from which the Mars Orbiter Mission was launched, is 1,410 kg. With the cryogenic engine, the GSLV’s capacity to the same orbit is 2,500 kg. By being able to lift more equipment, the GSLV hypothetically foretells our ability to launch more sophisticated instruments in the future.

The better engine

The cryogenic engine’s complexity resides in its ability to enhance the fuel’s flow through the engine.

An engine’s thrust—its propulsive force—is higher if the fuel flows faster through it. Solid fuels don’t flow, but they let off more energy when burnt than liquid fuels. Gaseous fuels barely flow and have to be stored in heavy, pressurised containers.

Liquid fuels flow, have higher energy density than gases, and they can be stored in light tanks that don’t weigh the rocket down as much. The volume they occupy can be further reduced by pressurising them. Recall that the previous launch attempt of the GSLV-D5, in August 2013, was called off 74 minutes before take-off because fuel had leaked from the liquid stage during the pre-pressurisation phase.

Even so, there seems no reason to use gaseous fuels. However, when hydrogen burns in the presence of oxygen, both gases at normal pressure and temperature, the energy released provides an effective exhaust velocity of 4.4 km/s—one of the highest (p. 23, ‘Cosmic Perspectives in Space Physics’, S. Biswas, 2000). It was to use them more effectively that cryogenic engines were developed.

In a cryogenic engine, the gases are cooled to very low temperatures, at which point they become liquids—acquiring the benefits of liquid fuels also. However, not all gases are considered for use. Consider this excerpt from a NASA report written in the 1960s:

A gas is considered to be cryogen if it can be changed to a liquid by the removal of heat and by subsequent temperature reduction to a very low value. The temperature range that is of interest in cryogenics is not defined precisely; however, most researchers consider a gas to be cryogenic if it can be liquefied at or below -240 degrees fahrenheit [-151.11 degrees celsius]. The most common cryogenic fluids are air, argon, helium, hydrogen, methane, neon, nitrogen and oxygen.

The difficulties arose from accommodating tanks of super-cold liquid propellants—which includes both the fuel and the oxidiser—inside a rocket engine. The liquefaction temperature for hydrogen is 20 kelvin, just above absolute zero; for oxygen, 89 kelvin.

Chain of problems

For starters, cryopumps are used to trap the gases and cool them. Then, special pumps called turbopumps are required to move the propellants into the combustion chamber at higher flow-rates and pressures. Next, relatively expensive igniters are required to set off combustion, which also has to be controlled with computers to prevent them from burning off too soon. And so forth.

Because using cryogenic technology drove advancements in one area of a propulsion system, other areas also required commensurate upgrades. Space engineers learnt many lessons from the American Saturn launch vehicles, whose advanced engines (for the time) were born of using cryogenic technology. They flew between 1961 and 1975.

In the book ‘Rocket Propulsion Elements’ (2010) by George Sutton and Oscar Biblarz, some other disadvantages of using cryogenic propellants are described (p. 697):

Cryogenic propellants cannot be used for long periods except when tanks are well insulated and escaping vapours are recondensed. Propellant loading occurs at the launch stand or test facility and requires cryogenic propellant storage facilities.

With cryogenic liquid propellants there is a start delay caused by the time needed to cool the system flow passage hardware to cryogenic temperatures. Cryogenically cooled fluids also continuously vaporise. Moreover, any moisture in the same tank could condense as ice, adulterating the fluid.

It was in simultaneously overcoming all these issues, with no help from other space-faring agencies, that ISRO took time. Now that the Mark II has been successfully launched, the organisation can set its eyes on loftier goals—such as successfully launching the next, mostly different variant of the GSLV: the Mark III, which is projected to have a payload capacity of 4,500-5,000 kg to GTO.

While we are some way off from considering the GSLV for manned missions, which requires mastery of reentry technology and spaceflight survival, the GSLV Mark III, if successful, could make India an invaluable hub for launching heavier satellites at costs lesser than ESA’s Ariane program, which India used in lieu of the GSLV.

Good luck, ISRO!