11/11/2014
1) A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
2) Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, the father of India's Space Program
3) Dr. HGS Murthy, Director of TERLS.
H. G. S. Murthy left MTPF (Ambarnath) in 1963 to set up the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), of which he became Test Director under the Chairmanship of Dr Vikram Sarabhai. Dr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, who later became President of India, worked for over nine years in his team in the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) near Trivandrum. From
1972–79 Murthy was Expert and Consultant on
Space Applications for the United Nations and FAO
in New York. InOctober 2008, 90 years old Murthy
enjoyed the successful launch of Chandrayaan-1,
India’s first rocket to the moon.
"(2)Sarabhai discussing a filament winding machine with (1)Abdul Kalam, program leader for the satellite rocket and later president of India, Madhavan Nair, later chairman of ISRO, rocket engineer S. C. Sathya, and (3)H. G. S. Murthy, later director of the Thumba equatorial rocket launching station in January 1968. Though a hand-turned filament machine had just been rigged up, Sarabhai asked the group to develop a mechanized one to produce nonmetallic fiberglass nose cones needed to encase and fly magnetometer payloads. Sarabhai promised to have the new winding machine, incorporating an old car gearbox, switched on by the prime minister in February 1968 at Thumba, but prior to that formal occasion, he wanted to make sure that the machine worked properly. Sarabhai involved these colleagues in reengineering a Soviet rocket engine and reengineering French and American rockets; he was briefed regularly by Kalam concerning a Defence Ministry missile project. A site for eastward long-range rocket and missile launches was being chosen and developed at his time, just north of Madras. Sarabhai died in 1971, before he could see an Indian satellite go up—something he worked on since 1962."