It was an achievement much discussed in India and Japan, the region’s other two space powers.
China’s success came at an especially difficult time for Japan, which suffered a staggering series of accidents that launched the country’s space industry into a prolonged period of self examination.
Japan began the year on a high note with the successful launch of two imaging satellites — the fifth consecutive successful launch of the country’s H-2A rocket.
The trouble started in July when Japan’s reusable launch vehicle test program suffered an embarrassing setback when the High Speed Flight Demonstration Phase 2 model crash landed in a forest in Sweden.
On Oct. 1, the National Space Development Agency of Japan, the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science and the National Aerospace Laboratory were merged into the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
Later in October, the $570 million Midori-2 Earth observing satellite failed after less than a year in orbit following an electrical power failure on the satellite’s solar sail. Midori 2’s predecessor failed when its solar sail crumpled. The same month, the Kodama communications satellite was knocked out of commission for a month by a massive solar flare.
Although JAXA was to restore the satellite to functionality on Nov. 25, more questions were raised about the maturity of the nation’s satellite technology. In December, the Nozomi probe shot past Mars, unable to put itself in orbit around the planet. The cause of that problem was traced to an electrical failure that occurred in 2002 while the spacecraft was making its way to Mars on a convoluted trajectory made necessary by a thruster failure soon after the spacecraft was launched in 1998.
In addition, it was revealed in December that the infrared astronomy satellite, ASTRO-F, has a design flaw that will delay its launch about a year from 2004 until 2005.
But Japan’s rocket engineering credibility came into serious question in December when a strap-on solid rocket booster failed to separate from the H-2A, dooming the rocket’s sixth flight and destroying its payload of a second set of imaging spy satellites.
Japanese space officials said the failure likely was caused by the crack or meltdown of the solid rocket booster’s nozzle. The accident occurred after more than six weeks of launch pad checks on the rocket, which had originally been scheduled for a Sept. 10 launch.
The H-2A failure in particular points to a serious manufacturing error or a fundamental design flaw that has underlined Japan’s lack of experience and narrow industrial base, Masakazu Iguchi, chairman of Japan’s Space Activities Commission, said in a Dec. 5 interview with Space News. Iguchi said Japan needs to rethink its approach to reliability.
"The fault probably occurred up to five years ago when the booster was designed. A solid rocket booster needs to be even more reliable than the rocket’s other engines. I am afraid that the engineers who designed the booster did not understand me when we [the Space Activities Commission] asked them to make sure it was reliable. We will have to re-educate them," he said.
Japan has been successful with its auto and electronics industries because of a total commitment to "kaizen" (or constant re-examination and quality improvement) a concept and practice that Japan’s space engineers have yet to master, he said.
"Japan’s space engineers are of very high quality but their professional experience is very narrow. Japan’s space development community is like a small village. Engineers think that 95 percent reliability is good enough.
"We will have to bring in experts from the automobile and aerospace industries," he said. Iguchi predicted that the investigation into the launch failure would probably have to be completed in three months because of pressure from Japan’s Cabinet Office, which controls the country’s IGS program.
The Cabinet Office is anxious to see a series of successes before new sets of security satellites are launched. While Iguchi suggested the commission would probably want more time, the investigation will still likely delay Japan’s three major satellite launches next year.
The payloads include the MTSAT-1R weather and air traffic control satellite, the Advanced Land Observing Satellite, and the ETS-8 experimental communications satellite. The MTSAT-1R is the replacement for a satellite that was lost in a November 1999 failure of an H-2 rocket. The issue is also likely to delay the privatization of the H-2A to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which was due for next April, according to sources.
"We now have to climb back out of the pit we have fallen into," said Iguchi, who recently initiated a top-to-bottom review of all of Japan’s space programs. "I have been chairman for three years and I want to start over again," he said.
By contrast, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had a successful year, though without as dramatic an achievement as China’s.
The country achieved four successful launches, government approval for seven more communication satellites and got a green light for the country’s first robotic mission to the moon.
"It has also been one of the busiest years for us," ISRO spokesman S. Krishnamurthi told Space News Dec. 4. The 2004 launch calendar, he said, "is equally crowded with at least three missions planned."
But the year went by without bringing ISRO any cheer on the commercial front. Antrix Corp., the commercial arm of ISRO, failed to make any headway into the global commercial space market despite its offer to sell low-priced satellites and launches.
The $100 million moon mission scheduled for 2008 is to launch a 525-kilogram satellite that will orbit the moon at an altitude of 100 kilometers. The satellite will be launched using a modified version of India’s indigenous Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. The lunar orbiter will have a life of two years.
ISRO’s major cause for celebration however is the second successful launch of the Mark-1 version of the geostationary satellite launch vehicle (GSLV) on May 8. It put the 1,800-kilogram satellite GSAT-2 — the heaviest launched from the Indian soil — in geostationary transfer orbit. This vehicle uses a Russian cryogenic engine for its third stage.
"With the second consecutive success we have declared GSLV Mark-1 operational," Krishnamurthi told Space News Dec. 4. He said the next big challenge for ISRO is the launch of GSLV Mark-2 powered by a homemade cryogenic engine instead of Russia’s. This is not expected until 2005.
Year 2003 also saw some changes at the top management of ISRO. Gopalan Madhavan Nair, a senior most staff member in the ISRO hierarchy became chairman of ISRO, replacing high profile Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan who was nominated by the government to be a member of Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian parliament.
In the year ahead, India plans to launch Edusat, a satellite that will link schools and colleges; and Cartosat-1, an imaging satellite with a spatial resolution of 2.5 meters that government officials said will be used for town planning purposes.
The coming year will also see the commissioning of ISRO’s second launch pad at Satish Dhawan Space Center (in the east coast about 100 kilometers north of Chennai) and, according to ISRO’s annual report for 2002-2003, the launch of a 500-kilogram recoverable capsule onboard the polar satellite launch vehicle.
