Category NASA in the World

ATS-6 was the most complex and advanced communication satellite in NASA’s Applications Technology Satellite series.29 In 1966 NASA began launching a series of six such satellites manufactured by Fairchild to test and improve satellite com­munications. They were designed to carry out technological, meteorological, scien­tific, and communications research. The last of the series, ATS-6 was the largest, most complicated, and powerful of them all. It was a geosynchronous satellite— the orbital period for the 1,402-kilogram satellite around the globe matched the Earth’s 24-hour rotation so that the ATS-6 remained over the same spot on the earth. It was designed in such a way that it could be moved along the equator using its onboard thrusters to conduct space-based experiments in any region of the globe. In general it served as a powerful rebroadcasting station in space, capable

of transmitting signals directly to many small ground stations over a large area (figure 12.3). The prime objectives of ATS-6 missions involved demonstrating a 30-foot deployable antenna in synchronous orbit, providing a three-axis stabi­lized spacecraft with 0.1 degree pointing capability in all three axes, and provid­ing an oriented platform at synchronous altitude for advanced technological and scientific experiments. The SITE was made possible when all of these objectives were achieved.30ATS-6 thus represented the kind of satellite system appropriate for communications within many developing countries, where most of the population lived dispersed in rural areas, rather than in large population centers.31 ATS-6 was launched on May 30, 1974, and it carried approximately 15 scientific experiments in the field of communication, meteorology, and spacecraft stabilization.

While ISAS was working on the K, L, and M series of solid booster rockets in the early 1960s, NSDC, the precursor of NASDA, worked on solid – and liquid – fuel rockets designated as the JCR (Jet Controlled Rocket) and the LS-C series. Both the JCR and LS-C rockets were two-stage rockets, the first using solid fuels only, the second a combination of solid and liquid fuels. Both were later built into a three-stage Q rocket, which was in turn overtaken by the more pow­erful N (Nippon) launcher built with American help. Work on Q was not entirely wasted, however. Flight-testing of the JCR helped develop the control system of N-1, while a liquid stage from the LSC was later adopted as the second stage of N-1, which made its maiden flight in 1975.

The successful N-1 launch vehicle built after the 1969 agreement comprised three stages. The liquid first stage was adopted from the Thor-Delta Vehicle produced by McDonnell Douglas. The liquid fuel used was LOX and RJ-1 propellants. The engine for this first stage was produced in Japan under license with technological assistance from Rocketdyne. To give added thrust it had three strap-on boosters, Thiokol’s Castor II-TX354-5, which were also produced under license in Japan. The second-stage engine was adopted from the Q rocket, as men­tioned a moment ago, with some American assistance. It used nitrogen tetroxide and Aerozine 50. NASDA wanted to build this stage in Japan indigenously so as to retain some Japanese component and as a platform for building its own stages in future. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) constructed the rocket engines for the second stage. The third-stage motor was imported from the United States.

During the 1970s N-1 launched six satellites into orbit including Kiku 2 (1977), Japan’s first geostationary satellite that was built indigenously based on American technology. It was upgraded for launching heavier satellites up to 350 kilograms and was designated N-2. Following the N series the logical step toward launching heavier application satellites led to the development of the H series of rockets. Preliminary studies on the H began in the mid-1970s and two test flights were conducted in August 1986 and August 1987. The first stage, strap-on boosters, and fairing were manufactured under license and the rest—cryogenic second-stage, inertial guidance system and the third-stage solid motor—were developed indigenously. Thereafter a fully indigenous more advanced rocket called H-II was developed in the mid-1980s with the first test flight on February 4, 1994. Though this was a technological triumph for Japan it was not a commercial success. The launch cost was around $190 million, which was twice the cost of a launch with the European Ariane or American Atlas.42

To overcome the cost problem Japan initiated the H-IIA development pro­gram, with the primary goal of cutting launch costs in half by increasing the launch rate. While Japanese technological independence was a primary purpose of the original H-II program, the overriding commitment to low cost in the H-IIA program led to contracts with ATK Thiokol in Utah, who supplied solid rocket booster technology. Boeing and Man technologies of Germany were also selected to produce core stage tank domes.43 Table 10.2 gives one some idea of the extensive presence of American firms in Japanese launcher development, and the gradual reliance on national industries to provide key components such as guidance and control.

ISRO was responsible for the installation and maintenance of the earth sta­tions and also the design, installation, and maintenance of the augmented com­munity receivers. The earth stations and the DRS formed the ground segment of the network. While NASA provided the satellite, the ground segment was indigenously manufactured by ISRO with little help from foreign countries. The earth stations helped transmit signals to the satellite, the satellite received these signals, amplified them, and transmitted them back to earth where they were received by custom-made television sets that were suitably tuned.

Four earth stations located in Ahmedabad, Delhi, Amritsar, and Nagpur were utilized for the SITE project. The central earth station that transmitted the bulk of the programs using the 15-meter parabolic antenna was located in Ahmedabad. The second earth station, a 10-meter parabolic antenna located in Delhi, helped in telecasting national programs—Republic Day, Independence Day, and addresses from the prime minister and president. It also served as a backup facility if the central station in Ahmedabad were to face any techni­cal glitches. The third earth station was located in central India in Nagpur. It housed the “monopulse beacon” instrument. The ATS-6 satellite had the capa­bility of “homing in” to a beacon station located to keep the satellite accurately oriented if its internal pointing systems failed. This was one of the important back up modes to ensure the ongoing functionality of the ATS-6 spacecraft.

In 1967 Japan’s National Space Development Center strongly recommended that the country launch its own comsat by 1970 to ensure that it had some weight in shaping the negotiations on the definitive arrangements for Intelsat that got under way in 1969 and that lasted more than two years (see chapter 5). The alternative, as one document put it, was to have Japanese skies “dominated by the U. S. which as a member of INTELSAT (International Telecommunications Satellite Consortium) now has practical control of space communications networks.”44 This concern doubtless catalyzed U. Alexis Johnson’s determined effort to accelerate American technological help for Japan’s domestic launcher in 1969. In the event, the slow progress made in the negotiations to upgrade the N-1 led the Japanese authorities to seek alternative routes to the geostationary orbit for both a meteorological satellite and two communications satellites.

NASA was willing to consider two options: it could provide a reimbursable launch on a Delta 2914 from American soil or it could sell a Delta 2914 to Japan for launch there. The latter option was soon shelved. The agency was concerned about the transfer of launch operations know-how to a foreign country. A National Security directive (NSDM187 ofAugust 30, 1972) specifically restricted the transfer of launch vehicles to other counties for communications satellites.45 Finally the high cost of launching a Delta 2914 from the Japanese site at Tangeashima persuaded the authorities in Tokyo that it was preferable to request reimbursable launches from the United States for their first generation of geosynchronous satellites.

A reimbursement agreement between NASA and NASDA was signed in 1972 for three satellites. Himawari (sunflower, 325 kilograms) was a meteorologi­cal satellite built by Hughes Aircraft for Japan’s NEC. Sakura (cherry flower, 350 kilograms) was a telecommunications satellite built by Ford Aerospace for MELCO. Yuri (lily, 350 kilograms) was a broadcast satellite built by the Space Division of General Electric for Toshiba. They were launched in quick succession between July 1977 and April 1978 from the Kennedy Space Center, though not before a major misunderstanding between the two partners had been resolved.

At the core of the dispute was the question of responsibility for the insertion of the satellite in the geostationary orbit. Early in 1974 NASA decided to offer geo­stationary orbit insertion services only for US government spacecraft launched on a reimbursable basis.46 For other clients, NASA’s responsibility extended only to the separation of the satellite from the launch vehicle at the point of insertion into geostationary transfer orbit. At that point an apogee kick motor integrated into the satellite, and provided along with it by the client, would move the satel­lite to its final desired position. Soon thereafter it emerged that the Japanese, for their part, were under the impression that the reimbursable launch contract with NASA included placing the satellite at the desired location on the geosta­tionary orbit. On learning otherwise they took NASA’s advice and asked for bids from five American firms that had provided software support and insertion into the geostationary orbit for foreign satellites (Hughes, Philco-Ford, General Electric, Systems Development Corp, and Comsat General). These came in at about $12-15 million per satellite, excluding hardware, a figure to be compared with the launch cost of $10 million per satellite.47

Early in September 1974, in the light of this information, and an imminent visit by NASA administrator Fletcher to Tokyo, the Japanese embassy asked NASA to reconsider its decision. It wanted the agency to provide a complete package after the spacecraft was delivered to the Kennedy Space Center, from checkout, installation in the launch vehicle, insertion into synchronous orbit, in-orbit check out, and, finally, movement of the spacecraft to its desired orbital position. It was only at that point that control over and responsibility for the spacecraft would be turned over to the Japanese.

NASA’s associate administrator for tracking and data acquisition, Gerald Truszynski, explained what this commitment would mean to NASA. The agency would have to extend its span of responsibility considerably, and far beyond the normal provision of tracking and data acquisition support from its existing track­ing stations. Providing a full range of services for three satellites launched in quick succession meant establishing a dedicated Spacecraft Project Office (prob­ably at Goddard Space Flight Centre (GSFC)) to carry out the activities involved.

Operation of the control center and the development of the project-unique soft­ware would be major undertakings. Its personnel would not only have to be thoroughly familiar with the spacecraft design and characteristics but would probably also have to have access to the technical specifications to assure overall compatibility with the ground control systems. They would have to conduct mis­sion analyses to determine optimum mission profiles. Also NASA would have to contract with the spacecraft manufacturers to provide the support at KSC before launch and in the control center during and after launch. In summary, the response from NASA clearly stated that to accept overall responsibility, it would have to divert significant civil service manpower for about 18 months or more. Further, it would result in a complex administrative structure since it was very probable that NASA would be essentially placed between the Japanese and their US spacecraft manufacturers. In sum Truszynski suggested that the best that NASA could do was to compute and supply definitive orbit data in real-time, and to track the spacecraft during transfer orbit. It could also lend a couple of people to each Japanese project to provide technical advice of various kinds, and could host some Japanese engineers to work in its mission control centers and other NASA locations to learn how the agency did the job.48

NASA’s reluctance to satisfy Japan’s demands was reinforced by input from US industry. Bud Wheelon of Hughes Corporation let NASA know that he would be happier if Fletcher did not strike a deal with Japan on orbit inser­tion during the administrator’s forthcoming visit to Tokyo. As George Low explained to the NASA administrator,

Apparently, each of the U. S. companies is in a major loss situation with respect to the satellite being built for the Japanese and had planned to use the orbit insertion business to “get well.” In Bud’s words, “if the government now steps into the orbit insertion business, we would in effect be subsidizing the Japanese at the expense of U. S. industry.”49

The Japanese fought back. Their Japanese scientific counselor at the embassy in Washington, Hisako Uchida, pushed the orbit insertion case further by citing the example of the Italian Sirio satellite, where NASA offered to insert the satellite into the geosynchronous orbit. In reply to the query by Uchida, NASA again detailed its general policy associated with orbit insertion services. NASA’s responsibility was limited to “insertion of the space craft into transfer orbit and all subsequent mission operations is lodged totally with the requesting agency or its contractors.” NASA categorically “denied providing such services for any non-U. S. govern­ment spacecraft launched on a reimbursable basis and does not contemplate doing so in the future.” NASA had to offer geosynchronous orbit injection support ser­vices for the Italians because of the formal commitment made to Italian National Research Council (CNR) in 1971. “In recognition of this commitment prior to adoption of the 1974 policy, NASA agreed in late December 1974 to honor its previous commitment and provide minimal geostationary injection support services for SIRIO only.” In all other reimbursable non-US government cases injection into geostationary orbit “has been and will continue to be conducted from facilities other than NASA’s.” For example, the geostationary orbit injection of the Franco-German Symphonie satellite launched by NASA in December 1974 was conducted from ESOC (European Space Operations Center) in Germany.50 With that the matter was apparently closed in NASA’s favor.

As we have seen Japan’s quest for launcher autonomy was intimately linked with its determination to gain access to the geostationary orbit for telecommu­nications satellites, both to enhance its influence in Intelsat and to strengthen its position in the global market for comsats. To secure the strength of national industry the Japanese authorities took a number of measures in the 1980s to close the home market to outside competition. NASDA channeled “all govern­ment satellite procurement to Japanese firms, prohibited the procurement of all kinds of satellites, and banned the procurements [abroad] of Japan’s telecom­munication giant, NTT, despite the lower price and superior quality of foreign satellites.”51 The result was that local content in comsats increased from 24 per­cent in 1977 to 80 percent in 1988, while local content in broadcast satellites grew from 14 to 83 percent in the same period.52

The US authorities, with widespread domestic support, objected strongly to the restrictions on foreign procurement by Japan in this sector. It not only excluded American firms from the Japanese market but also signaled Tokyo’s determination to secure a leading position in the global telecommunications satellite market. Section 301 of the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act, passed by Congress in August 1988, provided the United States with an instrument to lever open the Japanese market. The overall legislation had been in place for almost 15 years, and was a response to the change in the American balance of trade beginning in the late 1970s from a modest surplus to a massive deficit. Section 301 was tightened up in 1988 by introducing a so-called Super 301 amendment that was unusual in being “targeted against the behavior of governments in their home markets instead of focusing on the competition provided by imports in the United States” (e. g., by illegal dumping).53 The US trade representative subsequently charged Japan as being engaged in unfair trading practices in three sectors: supercomputers, wood products, and telecommunications satellites, and threatened to impose trade sanc­tions against the country if it did not open these markets to US exports.

The Japanese were outraged as the United States was basically telling them to rein in their ambitions to be major competitors in the world market for comsats. Tokyo caved in all the same, canceling plans for the development of the fourth series of its communication satellite program. US producers such as Loral Space Systems, Hughes Space and Communications Group, and GE successfully won bids to supply satellites to Japanese firms, so pushing them out of the local market. As one representative from Hughes Space put it, the 1990 agreement opened a few more opportunities for the American company but, more impor­tantly, prevented Japan from sheltering “an infant industry that might eventually become a world-class competitor.”54 By the 1990s Japan had its own launchers, and it had built up immense in-house capability in the manufacture of geosta­tionary satellites. Its aspirations of becoming a world leader in the development and sale of space technology had not, however, been realized.

The direct reception systems, DRS, completed the vast network that was put in place for the SITE project. The development of the DRS was started in 1972 at the Electronics Systems Division of the Space Applications Center in Ahmedabad. The system had three main components: the antenna to receive the signals transmitted by the satellite, the front end converter to transform the signals into a form compatible with a normal television receiver, and a television receiver.

The antennas measuring ten feet in diameter, the front end converter, the most complex one in the assembly, and the television sets were first designed in the Space Application Center (SAC) in Ahmedabad. The prototypes were given to a public sector company, the Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), located in Hyderabad, for mass production. The television monitor itself was basically a commercial model slightly modified for community viewing and rural use. “Seven hundred of the 2400 sets were ‘ruggedized’ by using higher quality components, as a part of an ‘experiment-within-an-experiment’ to inves­tigate the tradeoffs between initial cost and maintenance cost.”32 To facilitate transfer of ‘know-how’ and to expedite production, some ISRO engineers who had developed these units were posted to ECIL.33

The direct reception systems were deployed in selected villages and the dis­tricts of six states, namely, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, and Rajasthan. The villages were selected according to the criteria laid down by the Planning Commission of India. The criteria included availability of electricity, public buildings, low population, and so on. To carry out an orga­nized effort of deployment, operation, and maintenance of these television sets, maintenance subcenters and a central cluster headquarters were established in each state. These cluster headquarters acted as nodes for the distribution and maintenance of the community reception system.

Before the SITE mission in India, the satellite was used to perform a variety of health and education television experiments via satellite in the Appalachian area, the Rocky Mountain Region, and Northwest United States including Alaska.34 In July 1975, while it was being shifted eastward along the equator for the SITE mission, the ATS-6 tracked the docked Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft as they orbited the Earth in the Joint US/USSR manned space mission (see chapter 7). It also relayed live television from these spacecraft to the Earth, thus becoming the first satellite to perform such a feat.35 After this it was positioned at 35,900 kilometers over east Africa and controlled from the Goddard Space Flight Center through a ground station in Spain. Since the downlink SITE fre­quency of 860 megahertz could interfere with terrestrial services in Europe, its antenna was pointed eastward toward India and away from Europe, thus avoid­ing interference with European surface broadcasts.

^NaSA’s cooperation with India began with the establishment of satellite track­ing stations and space science. Cognizant of the contributions made by Indian scientists in the field of astronomy and meteorology, a scientific tradition that stretched back several decades, NASA outlined a cooperative program that focused on mutual exploration of the tropical space for scientific data. The cooperation started in the early 1960s with the loan of sounding rockets, launchers, and the training of Indian scientists and engineers at selected NASA facilities dedicated to astronomical and meteorological research. This initial collaboration gradually expanded and more advanced space application projects brought the two demo­cratic countries, in spite of some misgivings, closer together in the common cause of using space sciences and technologies for developing and modernizing India. In the process NASA ended up coproducing a space program that articulated the sentiments of the postcolonial scientific and political elite of India. Conversely, the experience with India imparted a new meaning and architecture of what a space program should be in developing countries in Asia and Latin America.

NASA’s relation with India is contextualized here in the framework of the United States’ relations with India beginning in the early 1950s. The global Cold War and the ambiguities, desires, and tensions of a postcolonial nation-state vying for leadership among the newly decolonized states in the Afro-Asian region forms the essential backdrop to understanding the origins and trajectory of NASA – India relations. Using theoretical underpinnings from postcolonial, diplomatic, and science and technology studies, complemented with oral histories, this chap­ter weaves a narrative describing the motivations, justifications, and the trajectory of NASA’s relations with India.

Two interconnected themes frame its organization. First, the history and dis­course of modernization and development will be used to situate US-India foreign relations in the postwar period. In the wake of the Bandung conference (1955) leaders of newly decolonized states hoped to construct a third, “nonaligned” force in the international arena that was independent of the competing ideolo­gies of progress that defined Cold War rivalry. Bandung also became a platform for developing nations to embrace the mantra of rapid modernization and self­reliance to leapfrog into modernity. This movement was not always welcomed by the United States, which remained at arm’s length from India until its defeat in a

border war with China (1962) and the Chinese nuclear test (1964). The Chinese threat was given a global dimension: the People’s Republic of China (PRC) would become the model for newly liberated countries in the “Third World.” To coun­ter this threat the United States hoped both to accelerate India’s emergence as a major regional power and to use its technological advantage to direct India’s nuclear and missile ambitions into civilian space projects. US-India cooperation in space-based technologies was seen as a prestigious and useful alternative for the development needs of the country. The Indian scientific and political elite, aware of the evolving nonproliferation regime defined by the United States and the Soviet Union, sought to “indigenously” develop their own space technologies both for civilian and military purposes by creating new institutions domestically, and through the transnational traffic of experts, systems, and software. These themes are explored in what follows by tracing NASA’s relations with India on four technological systems—tracking stations and sounding rockets, communi­cation satellites, remote sensing, and launch vehicles.1

The term “software” was generally used for the program content of the satel­lite broadcast. An enormous amount of programming had to be produced for SITE as the satellite was available to India for approximately 1,400 hours of transmission.36 All India Radio, later Doordarshan, took the overall responsibil­ity for producing these programs. The educational programs were produced in three base production centers: Cuttack, Hyderabad, and Delhi. The production of such a large number of programs, keeping in view the basic objectives and the specific audience requirements, was a challenging task. Most of the studio facilities available to SITE were small, underequipped, and understaffed. This fact, coupled with the time pressure for production, created a continuing pres­sure toward easy-to-produce “entertainment” programming, even when audi­ence feedback indicated a preference for the so-called hard core instructional programs.37 Since the software part demanded a lot of attention from the Indian side Frutkin made every attempt to ensure that it was done properly. “When he visited India in January 1975, seven months before the experiment started, he insisted on a physical examination of television studios and programs.”38

Doordarshan formed separate committees to assist program production relat­ing to agriculture, health, and family planning. These committees were helped by institutions like the agricultural universities, teachers training colleges, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, and so on.39 Other departments and agencies like the Film Division, the National Center for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) under the Department of Education, along with inde­pendent producers, contributed to making film material for the software con­tent of the SITE project. SITE broadcasts regularly reached over 2,300 villages. Their size varied from 600 to 3,000 people, with an average of 1,200 inhabit­ants. Thus, about 2.8 million people had daily access to SITE programming.40 The programs were available for some four hours a day and were telecast twice, morning and evening.

SITE ended on July 31, 1976. Seeing the success of the project the Indian offi­cials and policymakers requested an extension of the program for one more year, but the request was not granted and ATS-6 was pulled back to the American region.

Frutkin, who orchestrated the SITE project for NASA, said that the one-year experiment proved the possibilities of the use of advanced satellites for mass communication. And he clearly knew that it would bring monetary benefits. “We took the satellite back. What was the consequence? India contracted with Ford Aerospace for a commercial satellite to continue their programs. . . the

BROADCAST SATELLITE BRINGS

EDUCATION TO INDIAN VILLAGE

Figure 12.4 ATS receiver and SITE watchers. Source: NASA.

point is, this program not only was an educational lift to India and demonstrated what such a satellite could do, but it brought money back into the U. S. com­mercial contracts for satellites for a number of years.”41 Years earlier in a House Committee report on the implications of satellite communications, he expressed the same view: “I’m quite confident that by virtue of our participation in this experiment, India will look to the U. S. first for the commercial and launching assistance it requires for future programs. And I think this is a very important product of our relationship.”42

SITE was regarded by many as a landmark experiment in the rapid upgrading of education in a developing country (figure 12.4). It became the most innova­tive and potentially the most far-reaching effort to apply advanced Western tech­nologies to the traditional problems of the developing world. For the first time NASA and ISRO cooperated very closely in an effort to determine the feasibility of using experimental communication satellite technology to contribute to the solution of some of India’s major education and development needs.43 For NASA the experiment provided a proof that advanced technology could play a major part in solving the problems of less-developed countries. It was seen as an impor­tant expression of US policy to make the benefits of its space technology directly available to other peoples and also a valuable test of the technology and social mechanisms of community broadcasting. Seeing Indian states to be linguisti­cally divided, the US State Department hoped that the experiment offered India an important and useful domestic tool in the interests of national cohesion. The experiment also stimulated a domestic television manufacturing enterprise in India with important managerial, economic, and technological implications. It provided information and experience of value for future application of educa­tional programs elsewhere in the world.44

Frutkin was emphatic about the value of SITE for other developing countries. “The Indian experiment is, of course, of prime significance for developing coun­tries, those which have not been able to reach large segments of their population, those which have overriding social problems which might be ameliorated through communication and education and particularly those where visual techniques could help to bypass prevalent illiteracy.”45 The SITE experiment played a cru­cial role for India too. The results of the year-long SITE project were evaluated carefully by the Indian government. The data played a major role in determin­ing whether India should continue to develop her own communication satellite program (INSAT) or fall back on the use of more traditional, terrestrial forms of mass communication in order to transmit educational programs to the popu­lace.46 Thanks to SITE the first-generation Indian National Satellite (INSAT-1) series, four in total, was built by Ford Aerospace in the United States.47

The SITE project represented an important experimental step in the develop­ment of a national communications system and of the underlying technological, managerial, and social supporting elements. Following the proposal made by India, Brazil too initiated a proposal for a quite different educational broad­cast experiment utilizing the ATS-6 spacecraft. The project was intended to serve as the development prototype of a system that would broadcast television and radio instructional material to the entire country through a government – owned geostationary satellite.48 Frutkin saw the Indian project and the Brazilian experiment to be a model for other developing countries. In 1976 Indonesia became the first country in the developing world to have its own satellite system, the Palapa satellite system, manufactured by engineers at NASA and at Hughes Aerospace.49

SITE showed India that a high technology could be used for socioeconomic development. It became one justification for building a space program in a poor country—the question became “not whether India could afford a space program but can it afford not to have one”?50 “Modernization” through science and tech­nology was not new to the Indian subcontinent. In more than two centuries of British occupation India witnessed a huge incursion of technologies—railways, telegraph, telephone, radio, plastics, printing presses for “development” and extraction.51 The geosynchronous satellite in postcolonial India can be seen as an extension of the terrestrial technologies that the British used to civilize/ modernize a traditional society. In this case the United States replaced the erst­while imperial power to bring order, control, and “modernization” to the newly decolonized states through digital images using satellite technologies that were far removed from the territorial sovereignty of nation-states.52

One cannot understand postindependent India without reference to the United States. Scholars who have studied the history of Indo-US relations over the last five decades have almost exhausted the English vocabulary to describe the ten­sions that prevailed between the two largest democracies.2 In the Cold War that ensued between the United States and the USSR soon after the independence of India and Pakistan from British rule in 1947, the United States favored an alli­ance with Pakistan owing to its strategic location, bordering the USSR, China, and the Middle Eastern countries. The ensuing partnership was intended to counter any communist expansion from China or the USSR into the South Asian region. While India espoused the policy of nonalignment, Pakistan sided with the United States, joined the Baghdad Pact and the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), and received extensive military supplies. This close alli­ance between the United Sates and Pakistan resulted in increased alienation between the United States and India and in the words of Dennis Kux, there was “a failure to understand each other’s political, economic, and geo-strategic complexities,” which ultimately “deepened these asymmetries.”3

However, though the political relations between United States and India seemed “estranged” on the surface during most of the Cold War, it is rather intriguing to see, underneath this “cold peace,” the extensive role the United States played through different government institutions and agencies to modern­ize India and to establish it as an alternative to the communist model adopted by the Soviet Union and, above all, China. As decolonization gathered momentum, the United States felt that it was imperative to stabilize and develop the country along capitalist and democratic ideals so as to win the hearts and minds of mil­lions of people in the Afro-Asian region. This is evident through the massive economic aid India received from the United States during the first two decades of India’s independence and the constant traffic of experts—from science and technology to cultural, linguistic, and economic fields—between the “metropo­lis” and “periphery.”4 Early nuclear cooperation, the origin and development of the Indian space program through NASA, artificial rainmaking experiments, oceanography studies, hybrid seeds and green revolution experiments through the Rockefeller Foundation—all of these technological projects during the 1950s and 1960s can only be seen as part of a sustained attempt by the United States to pull the Indian elite into the Western sphere of influence.

India’s humiliating defeat in the border war with China in 1962 briefly brought the United States and India diplomatically together. The defeat by China was a “Sputnik shock” for the Indians that led to a rapid rise in defense budgets. Renewed importance was given to science and technology for defense purposes. John F. Kennedy‘s administration made use of this opportunity to promote India’s democratic credentials. Kennedy’s policy toward developing countries, India in particular, showed a striking difference compared to previous administrations. While Eisenhower’s secretary of state John Foster Dulles divided countries into pro- and anticommunists, Kennedy and his advisers were sensitive to the needs of new postcolonial states and gave room for the expression of independent for­eign polices by different countries in the developing world. They also believed that economic stability would bring prosperity and political stability that in turn would be a bulwark against expanding communism. However, ongoing distrust of India’s neutrality colored Kennedy’s perception of the country and restricted the scale of his innovative approaches to improved bilateral relations.

Viewed through this geopolitical contextual grid, NASA’s significant coop­erative endeavors were not uniform but ebbed and flowed and were constantly shaped by this larger bilateral foreign policy framework. Significant punctuation points that altered, for better or for worse, NASA’s relations with India were: India’s border war with China—1962; the Chinese nuclear test—1964; the Indo – Pakistan War—1971; India’s first Peaceful Nuclear Explosion (PNE)—1974; the start of the Integrated Guided Missile Development program, IGMDP, in India—1983, after the successful orbiting of India’s satellite Rohini through an indigenously built Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV-3) in 1980; the impact of the Missile Technology Control Regime, MTCR—1987; the Pokhran II nuclear weapons tests—1998; and the closer diplomatic relations that ensued after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

This study of NASA-India relations is divided into two chapters. The first is a chronological narrative spanning five decades, beginning with space sci­ences initiated by NASA in the early 1960s and ending with a scientific moon mission called Chandrayaan I (Moon craft) in 2008. Built and orchestrated by India, Chandrayaan I, carried two NASA-built instruments on its maiden voy­age; it was a proud moment for both parties to see the maturation of a space program that NASA helped to found with the Indian scientific elite in the early 1960s. Chapter 12 describes a joint application satellite project called the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) in 1975-1976, often quoted by NASA officials as a prime example of the agency’s international collaboration. SITE led to a follow-on project in which US business corporations sold commu­nication satellites—the INSAT series—and launches to India.5

Two major geopolitical changes in the 1990s have had very different impacts on NASA’s international relations over the past 20 years. The implosion of the Soviet system and the political will to integrate Russia into the core of what became the International Space Station (ISS) produced an exception to some time-hallowed NASA policies, notably, the notions of clean interfaces and no exchange of funds. By contrast, the “leakage” of sensitive satellite and missile technology to China, and its willingness to work closely with “rogue states” like Iran, gave traction to those who believed that the United States had to be far more prudent in its international posture, above all in sharing technology.1 This led to a tighter implementation of the ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) particularly as regards satellites. This added more layers of com­plexity and bureaucracy to international collaboration with traditional allies, and has stimulated lively debates between diverse stakeholders about the costs and benefits of implementing export controls more rigorously.

This chapter and the next discuss these developments. Since NASA’s decision to incorporate Russia into the ISS is treated in chapter 8, this analysis will pay greater attention to the structures of collaboration that were put in place before 1993. Those structures were deeply influenced by the history of NASA’s rela­tions with its traditional partners, above all Western Europe. Concerns about European disappointment at the outcome of the post-Apollo negotiations (chap­ters 4-6) and the ISPM affair (chapter 2) hung over negotiations between NASA and ESA. These past setbacks to the otherwise smooth path of cooperation were consciously drawn on as lessons that were not to be repeated. The classic prin­ciples of no exchange of funds and clean interfaces were not, however, put in question. That only happened when Russia was drawn into the project, bringing with it an array of Cold War technologies, record-breaking experience of long – duration human spaceflight, and a disintegrating infrastructure of institutions and industries that were seeking a new role for themselves. The architecture of the ISS was accommodated to incorporate Russian elements into technolo­gies that were critical to mission success. Millions of US dollars, both private and public, flowed to various actors in the Russian space sector in an attempt to revitalize them, and to engage them more tightly with American practices and priorities. The end-result was a space station in which NASA found itself

dependent on its partners in ways that were historically unprecedented. A new kind of international cooperation had been imposed, in which NASA’s mandate to sustain US leadership had to contend with its loss of autonomy.

The origin of the Indian space story often begins with the visionary scientist and technocrat Vikram Sarabhai, who is credited as being the father of India’s space program. But the early phase owes as much to the pioneering efforts of Homi Bhabha who was instrumental in the establishment of scientific institutions for the growth of science and technology in modern India.6 By the late 1950s, when initiatives were taken to pursue space research at a systematic level in India using scientific balloons and miniature rockets, Bhabha had already established the sci­entific ethos and the rationale for the pursuit of cutting-edge technologies in the nuclear and space domains, and had launched a major nuclear program. The duo, however, were not new to the field of space sciences; they had established their niche in cosmic ray physics even before they thought about huge scientific projects for the emerging nation state.7 In particular, Sarabhai was aware of the research opportunities, made possible by space technology, to study the upper atmosphere. Together they initiated early interactions with NASA for possible cooperative space projects.

Vikram Ambala Sarabhai was born in Ahmedabad, India, on August 12, 1919, to a wealthy family of industrialists.8 After finishing his early education in Ahmedabad he moved to St. John’s College, Cambridge, United Kingdom, in 1937 to read for his Physics and Mathematics Tripos. He returned to India after the outbreak of World War II and continued his professional training as a research scholar for several years under Nobel Laureate C. V. Raman at the Indian Institute of Science (IISC), Bangalore. It was at IISC that he nurtured a friendship with Homi Bhabha who was also doing research on cosmic rays, and who established a research unit for this purpose at IISC.9

Sarabhai returned to Cambridge after the war in 1945 and his extensive fieldwork carried out in Bangalore and Apharwat in the Kashmir region of the Himalayas enabled him to receive his PhD in 1947 for his doctoral thesis, Cosmic Ray Investigation in Tropical Latitudes. He returned to a new India that became independent in 1947 after centuries of British colonial rule. Jawaharlal Nehru became the first prime minister. Trained in Harrow and Cambridge, Nehru believed science to be a panacea for the innumerable problems faced by human­ity. As he put it,

[I]t is science alone that can solve the problem of hunger and poverty, of insanita­tion and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening custom and tradition, of vast resources running to waste, of a rich country inhabited by starving people. Who indeed can afford to ignore science today? At every turn we have to seek its aid. The future belongs to science and to those who make friends with science.10

There was an air of optimism and vibrancy, and the trio—Nehru, Bhabha, and Sarabhai—with patronage from the government and private industrial enterprises like the Tata family and Sarabhai’s own family business conglomerate, would become potent actors to wield science and technology to cement the new nation­state.11

Vikram Sarabhai started a laboratory for the study of cosmic rays in Ahmedabad, which was later institutionalized by the setting up of the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) in 1954.12 Thanks to the business enterprise his family had established, he became in Thomas Hughes’s phrase, a heterogeneous engineer with a multitude of portfolios.13 Popular writings portray him as an institution builder, a visionary, a pragmatist, and a Gandhian. Sarabhai never wavered in his view that the development of a nation was intimately linked with the under­standing and application of science and technology by its people. He selectively appropriated the modernization theories emanating from premier institutions like Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University in the United States and created a rationale for a space program in a poor developing country, characterizing it as “a space program for rural development.” Thus for him, “Pursuit of cosmic rays and space research does not require an apology in a developing nation provided the activities are within a total scheme of priorities in the allocation of national resources.” He stressed that many of those who were engaged in pure science were also “involved in the organization and conduct of education, of planning and of industrial development in fields such as electronics and chemicals.” He himself “was actively interested in the application of science for the improvement of agricultural productivity and in the implications of science to society and problems of security.”14 For Sarabhai it was under these conditions that the indigenous development of advanced science and technology, including in space, was an imperative, not a luxury for a huge and relatively poor country like India. Indeed he believed that “what applies to the economy of India applies to the economy of most of the countries in the Indian Ocean region.” This is also why, while advocating for space, he was vocal against the superficial craving for prestige as justification for a developing nation to embark on a space program.

Vikram Sarabhai was also known in international circles as an apostle for world peace and disarmament. He was a member of Continuing Committee of Pugwash, and participated in Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and set up the Indian Pugwash Society. In the late 1960s Sarabhai became the scientific chairman of the UN Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, and so became a vector, as it were, to publicize the benefits of space for the newly formed devel­oping nation-states. He was also interested in integrating India with the global community. His familiarity and high esteem at international meetings was recog­nized and he was also elected president of the fourteenth general Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1970. The sense of isolation that India experienced under colonial rule served as a major impetus for building a domestic program, to engage with scientific institutions around the world as an equal partner, and to create avenues for technology and idea sharing.

US officials were captivated by the unusual combination of industrialist and physicist in one man. His participation in international conferences, his accomplish­ments in basic scientific research, his visiting faculty status at MIT, the list of com­mittees, commissions, and boards that he was a member of impressed the American embassy officials in India who wrote long reports to the US State Department of his activities. These qualities played a crucial part when NASA sought to build col­laborative partnerships with the developing regions—here was a member of a native elite who could be a suitable ambassador for NASA’s peaceful programs in develop­ing countries, and not just in the region but across the world.

Seeing the emerging field of space science and technology, and the prom­ise it offered, Homi Bhabha, the secretary of Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), also carved a niche within DAE in August 1961 for a rudimentary space science and research cell. Before the formation of this cell the Indian National Committee for the IGY had been asked to serve provisionally as the National Space Committee for India adhering to COSPAR. The initial cooperative relations between NASA and India were primarily negotiated by the DAE through Bhabha and Sarabhai. Prudence was the watchword at this time since, unlike Pakistan or Japan, there was no security arrangement in place with India for the protection of sensitive or classified information. The State Department was also aware of the presence of Soviet scientists and tech­nicians, including a number of Soviet airmen, in the country, and took note of the close cooperation that India sought with the USSR covering peaceful uses of atomic energy, operation of nuclear power stations, and the produc­tion and processing of uranium. Bhabha was particularly worrying: the State Department described him as one who expressed communist sentiments and who was also involved in “communist front activities.” He was seen as a poten­tial technocrat who could “utilize contacts with both sides involved in the East-West struggle in order to achieve the most advantageous opportunities to advance his objectives.”

Sarabhai died in 1971. The direction the Indian space program took under Vikram Sarabhai and the close cooperation he enjoyed with NASA, both techni­cal and managerial, for more than a decade shaped the future trajectory of the country’s space ambitions.