ISRO's naughty boy GSLV puts India into Cryo Club

U Sudhakar Reddy

Indian Space Research Organization’s naughty boy GSLV took off 

majestically leaving the launch pad with clouds of smoke and obeyed the flight profile 

and blasted off to create history. The GSLV D5 with super cool indigenously developed 

Cryo engine delivered satellite GSAT-14 into geostationary transfer orbit with remarkable 

precision.

After several failures in its attempt to develop cryogenic rocket technology, the ISRO on 

Sunday finally launched the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle with an indigenous 

cryogenic engine. With this Indian entered into high profile ‘Cryo club’.

Mr. K Sivan Mission Director of GSLV said ,”We used to call GSLV as naughty boy of ISRO. 

The naughty boy has become obedient today. He has meticulously done the job of injecting 

the satellite precisely. We could achieve all our targets as GSLV inject two tone plus 

satellite into the orbit. For the past one decade we are waiting for this type of 

performance from India side. The 1000 seconds of GSLV flight is fruit of  1000 days of 

hard and dedicated work of ISRO teams,”

GSLV-D5 is the eighth flight of GSLV launched from Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR in 

Sriharikota. GSAT-14 is the 23rd geostationary communication satellite built by ISRO 

which augments in-orbit capacity of extended C and Ku-band transponders.

GSLV-D3 luanched failed in April  15 2010 from SHAR. ISRO revisited the entire design of 

the GSLV apart from the indigenous cryogenic engine. On August 19 2013 ISRO aborted 

another attempt minutes before the launch after liquid fuel leaked from the second stage 

of the launch vehicle. ISRO then replaced the second stage fully and made several other 

changes.

 Mr. S Ramakirshnan director of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre said,”The first attempt of 

GSLV D 3 we almost made it but the starting process could not proceed beyond ignition. It 

was definitely a big challenge to understand what really went wrong. We had the benefit 

of the knowledge of all ISRO teams and everyone put heads together. We not only analysed 

the failure and working on what should be done to make sure next attempt a success Every 

person rose to the occasion putting their heart and should and the result is what we saw 

today,” He added ,”what happened few months back in August we went launched pad and for 

some other reasons we have to called off the launch. But in very short time stupendous 

efforts were made by the team,”