ISRO has registered new milestones by successfully executing two successful launches on October 23, 2022, and on Sunday, March 26, of its heaviest and largest rocket in record time. ISRO amassed an overall earning of more than 1100 crore rupees (137 million dollars) by launching the LVM3 rocket that transported 72 satellites of OneWeb – a British telecom company. The couple of space missions helped OneWeb in putting its cluster of 618 broadband satellites into Earth’s lower orbit.
Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman of OneWeb, brought to light PM Narendra Modi’s role in expediting these launches as ISRO falls under the umbrella of the Department of Space, which constitutes the prime minister’s portfolio. Mittal revealed that India intervened to help OneWeb at a time when the telecom company was in dire straits.
Recollecting the predicament, he said that six launches were previously cancelled due to the Russia-Ukraine war as the missions were in collaboration with Roscomos, the Russian space agency.
“The six launches were contracted and fully paid for (and after cancellation) we are struggling to get the money back. We lost 26 satellites and three dispensers (which eject the satellites into orbit) and a year’s time,” Mittal stated.
On account of the Russia-Ukraine war, Roscosmos demanded that OneWeb shouldn’t utilise the satellites militarily to Russia’s detriment. In addition, Moscow’s space industry has also taken a beating and Kremlin has demanded that the British government should sell its holdings in OneWeb. Ever since OneWeb cancelled its contract with the Russian space agency, the UK-based organisation has been unsuccessful in retrieving 36 satellites amounting to more than 50 million dollars.
“In the global commercial rocket launch industry, with Soyuz (Russian rocket) taken out, the scenario has not been easy. Only very few options are left. SpaceX gave us three rockets (despite OneWeb being a competitor to Elon Musk’s Starlink) and Prime Minister Modi recognised the moment and directed the entire Indian space ecosystem to step up and give two rockets to OneWeb and that has been a gamechanger for us,” said Mittal.
Further, he lauded ISRO for its successful launches and remarked that it has established itself as a serious and notable player in the global market. The Indian space agency has the golden opportunity of filling the void left by launchers like Russian Soyuz rockets, and Europe Ariane V, he said.
In response, PM Narendra tweeted, “Congratulations @NSIL_India @INSPACeIND @ISRO on yet another successful launch of LVM3 with 36 @OneWeb satellites. It reinforces India’s leading role as a global commercial launch service provider in the true spirit of Aatmanirbharta.”
Being a government-run space agency, ISRO allots rockets as per national priorities and customer requests on a first-cum-first-serve basis by mapping its mission well beforehand. Despite this, ISRO made rockets available at short notice – quite a challenging feat.
(Information sourced from WION and PIB)