Tag: Editorial

With the successful launch of the GSLV-F18 mission and the NVS-03 satellite’s healthy status, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is on course to heave a sigh of relief. Its last 18 months have been constrained by the consequences of two launch failures involving PSLV rockets, which share some of their design aspects with GSLV,...

Only in imagination, the mathematical imagination, does perfect equality exist. A fair coin has an equal probability of heads and tails, so across many tosses, the expectation is for the proportions to approach 50:50. Laborious demonstrations have shown that this is rarely the case; bias is preloaded into life. Only about 10% of humans are...

The irony was evident: on the day the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had its greatest success of the year — the launch of its first geosynchronous imaging satellite (EOS-05) on a temperamental GSLV — its employee organisations demanded clarity on its long-term plans. But this grievance was long in the making. Since the Indian...

The irony was evident: on the day the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had its greatest success of the year — the launch of its first geosynchronous imaging satellite (EOS-05) on a temperamental GSLV — its employee organisations demanded clarity on its long-term plans. But this grievance was long in the making. Since the Indian...

For much of the 20th century, a rocket tearing a white seam through the sky did for India roughly what football did for Argentina and Brazil. Nations shut out of the councils where economic and strategic weight was measured found, in a game of European origin, an arena where their poverty did not disqualify them....

The Department of Science and Technology’s latest figures on India’s research profile record a milestone. In 2023-24, private industry accounted for 51.8% of national research spending — a first in India’s history — overtaking all tiers of government combined for the first time. Moreover, industry now employs more core researchers than government institutions. Transport firms...

The sight of the giant rocket bearing the NASA Artemis II mission and its crew of four ascending into the sky in the early hours of April 2 (IST) brought cheers among onlookers on the ground and around the world. The mission has taken many years and several billion dollars to develop and brings the...

ISRO’s NavIC constellation, for which it has launched 11 satellites since 2013, is in operational distress. Only three satellites remain capable of providing position, navigation, and timing (PNT) services, leaving the constellation unable to fulfil its purpose of replacing the U.S.’s GPS system over the Indian subcontinent. A PNT constellation requires at least four PNT-capable...

The Centre’s rollback of the revision to India’s earthquake zoning by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), follows a major challenge to the methodology used, which some engineers believe are out of sync with site-based evaluations. Yet, the reversal is driven largely by the massive cost and execution implications, as the decision impacts urban planning,...

A venerable institution, facing accusations of opacity, decided to stun its detractors with some transparency. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) made public the report of a technical committee, constituted to analyse why the NVS-02 satellite, which was launched aboard a GSLV rocket on January 29, 2025, could not be placed in its intended orbit....