India's dream to Mars conceived from Vikram Sarabhai's home

AHMEDABAD: When the nation eagerly watched the launch of Mangalyaan in November last year — India's maiden journey to Mars — it was a dream, born from an outhouse of the Retreat Bungalow in Shahibaugh, which was finally realized. The outhouse belonged to Vikram Sarabhai, father of India's space program.

It was Sarabhai's laboratory-cum-office where this great scientist worked. It was here that two pioneering institutes — the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) — were conceptualized in 1945.

Sarabhai spent long hours for nearly two years at this outhouse blowing glass to make Geiger counters for studying cosmic rays and their varying intensities, along with some of his students. On November 11, 1947 with the support of Kasturbhai Lalbhai, Ahmedabad Education Society, Karmashetra Educational Foundation, Gujarat government and a small fund from Atomic Energy Commission, the PRL shifted out of Retreat Bungalow to a laboratory in MG Science College. In the new laboratory, too, cosmic rays and properties of upper atmosphere were studied.

Sarabhai would frequent Dr KR Ramanthan's meteorological laboratory in Pune and another laboratory in Gulmarg for his cosmic ray studies. In 1947, Sarabhai invited Dr Ramanathan to be the first director of PRL after his retirement.

Dr Praful Bhavsar, who was handpicked by Sarabhai at PRL to study cosmic rays in 1948, says: "I was a student of physics at SP College in Pune when I heard of Dr Sarabhai and Dr Ramanathan. I joined PRL in Ahmedabad. The team worked at a feverish pace. We talked of launching rockets and conducting balloon experiments to study the upper atmosphere till late 1950."

Timeline

1945: Vikram Sarabhai opens a small research lab for studying cosmic rays in the outhouse Retreat Bungalow, Shahibaugh

1947: Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) shifts to MG Science college

1947-48: Sarabhai invites Dr Ramanathan to be the first director of PRL after his retirement

1950: First balloon experiments conducted to study upper atmosphere

1952: C V Raman lays foundation of new PRL campus

1962: Seeds of Indian space programme sown after formation of the National Committee for Space Research (NCSR)

1963: Sarabhai seeks help from the United Nations and NASA for setting up Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station near Trivandrum. The first sounding rocket gets assembled in a church and launched from a nearby beach

1963-64: Asia's second experimental satellite communications earth station set up in Ahmedabad

1968: French Centuar rocket fired with Indian made payload fired from Thumba.

1969: Sarabhai proposes Indian equipment for tests on moon surface. Equipment is meant to piggyback on NASA's Apollo mission

1969: Sarabhai and his team from Bhabha Atomic Research Center make the first real time digital computer called 'Versatile Digital Computer' for defence applications.

December 29, 1971: Sarabhai reveals to his colleagues for the first time his plans to put India's first satellite into earth's orbit with the help of an indigenously built rocket at Thumba

Dec 30, 1971: Sarabhai passes away

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