How PSLV Rocket Tech Led To Missile Tech: Former ISRO Chairman Madhavan Nair Recalls

During the initial decades of the Indian space programme, various teams of Indian scientists were learning rocketry by trial and error, as the basic technology behind large rockets was not available in India. Graduating from the foreign-origin experimental rockets (Sounding rockets) that were launched to the Upper atmosphere, ISRO teams built their own Sounding rockets and then moved on to indigenously building small orbital rockets like SLV-3 and ASLV. However, the quest for developing the comparatively much larger and capable PSLV was an all-new ball game, Dr. Madhavan Nair, the former ISRO Chairman reveals in his recently-published autobiography ‘Rocketing Through the Skies’.

When the PSLV rocket’s (now known as India’s workhorse and most-flown orbital rocket) development work was being carried out in the late 1970s and 80s, ISRO teams debated and discussed everything from how many stages the PSLV would comprise, the kind of propulsion technologies it would use and what not. At that time, the PSLV was India’s most sophisticated space technological endeavour and Dr. Madhavan Nair then worked as the Associate Project Director of the PSLV.

Narrating an interesting anecdote, Dr Nair recalls how ISRO had decided to use a very rare and sophisticated material for the first-stage motor casing (the structural shell of a rocket) of the PSLV. “The then Director of the VSSC, Dr Brahm Prakash, also an expert metallurgist, decided to use maraging steel, which is five times stronger than ordinary steel, for the PSLV,” he mentions. However, maraging steel being a dual-use material posed challenges for ISRO. Given that it found application in rocketry and missiles, the USA, Japan and Britain refused to supply that material to India. Notably, maraging steel is also a brittle material, such that even a minute crack in the material could prove catastrophic for the rocket mission.

“The scientists at ISRO’s Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre led by then Director Dr. Brahm Prakash and Dr. MK Mukherji, collaborated with the public sector unit MIDHANI and developed maraging steel indigenously. Indeed, a feather in ISRO’s cap! The same steel later found application in many of our missiles and nuclear weapons,” Dr. Nair adds.

Likewise, ISRO had to indigenously design and develop a technology known as a ‘closed-loop guidance system’, which is meant to measure the real-time velocity and position of the rocket and steer it precisely to its destination. This technology also is central to missile development and therefore ISRO teams had to do it entirely in-house, Dr. Nair reminisces. In the autobiography, he narrates the transition from ISRO’s modest Thumba era to the Chandrayaan era, as he lived through it all and devoted his life to the cause of the Indian space programme.

Dr Madhavan Nair was the Chairman of ISRO from 2003-09 and his tenure witnessed the success of India’s maiden moon mission Chandrayaan-1. He is also a recipient of top Indian Government honours such as the Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan. Former ISRO scientist Jaya G Nair has collaborated with Dr. Madhavan Nair in translating, re-narrating and editing the original autobiography ‘Agniparikshakal’, which was in Malayalam.