SRIHARIKOTA: On the Sunday evening, when the Indian batsmen were on rampage against England, the GSLV-F04 carrying the 2130 kg communication satellite Insat-4CR successfully lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, taking a precession path, injected the satellite into a geosynchronous transfer orbit.

After the success of the launch, the ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair said, "I am happy to announce the complete success of the mission."

Mr. Nair also reported that he got telephonic felicitations from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who personally telephoned him to express his felicity.

Nair said, "The Prime Minister was extremely proud and happy about the success of the launch and appreciated the speed and precession of the mission."

With the launch that costed India over Rs 310 crore including the vehicle cost of Rs 160 crore and the satellite cost of Rs 150 crore of the Insat-4CR, India now has 212 transponders in the sky.

The Insat-4CR is the largest domestic communication satellite system in the Asia-Pacific region. It will further enhance the Insat system capacity. The payloads are 12 Ku-band 36 MHz bandwidth transponders employing 140 W TWTAs to provide effective isotropic radiated power of 51.5 dBW at edge of coverage with footprint covering Indian mainland and Ku-band Beacon as an aid to tracking the satellite.

Scheduled at 4.21 pm, the launch was delayed by two hours. The rocket blasted off at 6.20 pm. Initially, the launch programme had gone off as scheduled. The computer took over 12 minutes before the launch, but with only 15 seconds to go for lift-off, the computer detected an error and stopped the countdown.

Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre director B N Suresh reported, "The signal related to readiness of the cryogenic stage information did not come to the automatic launch sequence programme,"

Tension was building and there was uncertainty of launch; whether it would take place or not, but suddenly the signals came back during the second attempt at rectification. Even during its flight mission in the cryogenic stage the signals stopped creating tension.

Isro's GSLV, unlike the SLV, ASLV and PSLV series that failed in their initial launches, was a success from the very beginning, with its two test launches in April 2001 and May 2003 and its first operational flight launching the 1950 kg EDUSAT into the predetermined Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) in September 2004.

However, on July 10 last year the launch of the GSLV-F02 that was carrying India's communication satellite INSAT-4C failed. ISRO said that the launch failed due to sudden loss of thrust in one out of the four liquid propellant strap-on stages immediately after lift-off at 0.2 second.

The success of the GSLV-F04 is the result of the diligent effort of Failure Analysis Committee (FAC) that was formed by ISRO after the failure of the GSLV-F02 last year. Chaired by former director of Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SHAR) K Narayana, the committee was comprised of experts from academic and research institutions besides ISRO.

The FAC found that the propellant regulator in the failed engine had much higher discharge coefficient in its closed condition. The reason for this could be an inadvertent error in manufacturing, which escaped the subsequent inspection and acceptance test procedures. The regulator had functioned satisfactorily in all previous 50 engines manufactured and tested so far. The FAC concluded that the design of GSLV was robust and recommended for implementation of strict control on fabrication, inspection and acceptance procedures.

The 49 metre tall, 414 tonne GSLV is a three-stage vehicle. The first stage, GS1, comprises a core motor with 138 tonne of solid propellant and four strap-on motors each with 42 tonne of hypergolic liquid propellants (UH25 and N2O4).

The second stage (GS2) has 39 tonne of the same hypergolic liquid propellants. The third stage (GS3) is a cryogenic stage with 12.6 tonne of Liquid Oxygen (LOX) and Liquid Hydrogen (LH2). The Aluminium alloy GSLV payload fairing is 3.4 m in diametre and is 7.8 m long.

Nair said, "This mission has come through a mill. First we had to cope with the failure. Generally, manufacturing a satellite takes 20-30 months. We did it in 12 months,"

The mission was strewn with problems. There were heavy rains throughout the preparation stage, which were bad for the vehicle, especially when it was being rolled out of its bay. According to Nair, 40 hours was lost because of the rain. On August 24, a road accident killed two key officials.

On Sunday, there was a gloom in the control room, as the familiar face of Isro director (Publications and Public Relations) S Krishnamurthy (57) and scientific secretary Dr Rajeev Lochan (56) were missing at the space centre.

The two scientists succumbed to a cruel car crash that killed Lochan and the driver on the spot. Krishnamurthy, who was in a critical condition with multiple fractures, including in the spine and at the base of his skull, died on Saturday night. One-minute-silence was observed in their memory.

The accident took place when Krishnamurthy and Lochan were on their way from Tirupati to Sriharikota in connection with this launch. The funeral of Krishnamurthy, an electronic engineer who has been with Isro for 35 years and was its director for 18 years, will take place on today.

ISRO PRO B R Guruprasad said, "No one was in a good mood. Everyone was upset. It was difficult to even think of a launch without Krishnamurthy."