3 ms·

If anyone is interested in the off-hand claim made in the article about ISRO being one of the few organizations to return a satellite to Earth: http://en.wikip

If anyone is interested in the off-hand claim made in the article about ISRO being one of the few organizations to return a satellite to Earth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Capsule_Recovery_Experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Capsule_Recovery_Experime... SRE-1 was launched and landed in Jan 2007. It was a small sat with aeroshell and parachute for reentry, with water splashdown. Reentry has been done by: NASA, ESA, Russia, India, China, Japan, and SpaceX. Reentry is mostly for manned spaceflight, which was the driver behind the SRE mission. ISRO has ambitions in this direction, though the manned program seems to be on the back burner now. (There are other uses for re-entry: planetary exploration and sample return, mostly. But getting to other planets or getting samples from somewhere interesting tends to be pretty hard. Older spy sats used to re-enter their data payloads, but that's not needed anymore.)

swatkat 13y ago
Yes :) ISRO will be testing SRE-2 next year[1]. Ground tests of a crew module[2] are underway; hopefully orbital test would be done in GSLV Mk III in another two years[3]. Human space flight might be delayed (2020?) due to budget constraints, and also GSLV Mk III should be "human rated" first. I think ISRO gets an unfair treatment when they take up such forward-looking projects. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Capsule_Recovery_Experiment_II http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Capsule_Recovery_Experime... [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISRO_Orbital_Vehicle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISRO_Orbital_Vehicle [3]http://newindianexpress.com/nation/Manned-expedition-hopes-rest-on-GSLVs-shoulders/2013/10/31/article1865523.ece http://newindianexpress.com/nation/Manned-expedition-hopes-r...