India's GSLV-F06 goes BOOM ! on Christmas day.

[Just_Boy]

Over in 47 seconds

The launcher rocket carrying India’s heaviest communication satellite exploded 47 seconds after lift-off, hurting the country’s ambitions for space commerce and manned missions on Christmas Day.

The home-grown geo-stationary satellite launch vehicle (GSLV-F06), was meant to put the GSAT-5P in orbit and gain India entry into a small club of countries with the technology to send heavy satellites into space.

Instead, it disintegrated amid orange and white plumes, scripting back-to-back failures for the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro). The previous GSLV launch on April 15 this year had ended up in the Bay of Bengal because of a snag in India’s maiden indigenous cryogenic engine.

The double disaster this year has exposed as premature all talk about future manned Indian space missions, and also led to fears that the country’s second unmanned moon mission, Chandrayaan-2, may miss its 2013 deadline

India wants to expand its satellite launch business to about $120 million a year —a quarter of China’s share of the world market. But although India has had success launching lighter satellites — in 2008, it sent 10 into orbit from one rocket -— it has faced problems sending up payloads heavier than 2,000kg, hobbling its commercial ambitions.

 

[Vlad n U 2]

India cannot into space now.