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India’s ambition to join the elite club of space nations stalled last week
when the maiden flight of its new 400-tonne Geosynchronous Satellite Launch
Vehicle (GSLV) was aborted on the launch pad. The four liquid-fuel strap-on
boosters ignited as scheduled 4.6 seconds before lift-off but one of the
boosters did not develop sufficient thrust. “So the solid stage did not get
ignited,” says Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan, head of the Indian Space Research
Organisation. The GSLV is the product of a 10-year, $305 million
programme and was designed to place 2-tonne satellites into geostationary
orbit.