ISRO pioneer R. Aravamudan narrates the gripping story of the people who built India's space research programme and how they did it - from the rocket engineers who laid the foundation to the savvy young engineers who keep Indian spaceships flying today. It is the tale of an Indian organization that defied international bans and embargos, worked with laughably meagre resources, evolved its own technology and grew into a major space power. Today, ISRO creates, builds and launches gigantic rockets which carry the complex spacecraft that form the neural network not just of our own country but those of other countries too. This is a made-in-India story like no other.

Fifty years in the making, India's Space Programme is fulfilling the vision of its founders and delivering services from space that touch the lives of 1.3 billion people every day. In addition to operating a collection of satellites for weather, Earth observation, navigation and communication today, India has a spacecraft orbiting Mars and a space telescope in Earth orbit. This book provides the big picture of India's long association with science, from historical figures like Aryabhata and Bhaskara to Homi Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai, the key architects of its space program. It covers the scientific contribution of Indian scientists during the European Enlightenment and industrial revolution. It traces the technological development of Tipu Sultan's use of rockets for war in the 1780s; the all-but-forgotten contribution of Stephen H Smith's use of rockets as a means of transport in 1935 in northern India; and the emergence of Sriharikota – India's spaceport, the heart of India's modern Space Programme. • A detailed account of how a fishing village in Kerala was transformed into a space centre and used to launch India's first rocket into space on 21 November 1963. • A detailed summary of India's space infrastructure – launch vehicles, deep space network, Telemetry, Tracking and Command and space assets in orbit. • Description of how the ordinary people of India benefit from the services delivered by the space programme • Why India chose to go to the Moon and Mars and how it got there. • The prospects for India's ambitions in space for human spaceflight, national security and scientific exploration • An analysis of how India's Space Programme may play out on the global stage. Will it compete or collaborate with China, USA and Russia in space? This detailed work, in 645 pages, 29 tables and 9 appendices, is richly illustrated with 140+ illustrations (some images published for the first time) and supported by over 1,000 references. It is written for the non-specialist, offering a big-picture view.

Few space programmes anywhere in the world would have had such a modest beginning: one van and a small fleet of precious bicycles used, besides other things, for ferrying parts of sounding rockets--rockets that glean information on the upper atmosphere--to the launch site. And for use as an office and laboratory was the St Mary Magdalene Church at Thumba, the small fishing village in Kerala where it all started. What the programme lacked in facilities, however, was more than made up for by the dedication of the small band of people who worked there, and their calibre. Leading this team was Vikram Sarabhai, one of the great visionaries of modern India. A great motivator of people, he was able to inspire his talented team to put India firmly on the path to space exploration. Then and now, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has continued to draw gifted people of the stature of Satish Dhawan, Brahm Prakash, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and U.R. Rao, to list only a few. Reach for the Stars: The Evolution of India's Rocket Programme relates, for the first time, how India developed its satellite launch capability. heartbreak, and one rendered all the more difficult as most of the technology had to be developed indigenously, ranging from the rocket engines themselves to precision guidance systems. Today India is able to design and build its own Polar Satellite Launch Vehicles (PSLV) to launch remote sensing satellites used in weather forecasting, resource mapping and crop yield estimates--functions crucial to putting the country on the fast track to development. In fact, the Indian remote sensing satellites form the largest constellation of such satellites in space. From sounding rockets to PSLVs has been a huge technological jump, and in this dramatic and amazing story author Gopal Raj tells how the transition was made, and the reasoning behind some of ISRO's most difficult choices in the course of thirty-eight years. It is specially apt that the book comes when the Indian rocket programme is poised at the edge of a new phase of growth, when cryogenic technology will give India the capability to launch its own communication satellites. story of a group of people who, as with their gravity-defying rockets, could rise above their limitations to accomplish the impossible.

A top scientist is falsely accused of selling space technology secrets. A police inspector's misadventure with a Maldivian woman results in a fabricated espionage case. A faction within a political party capitalises on the case to bring down a government. An intelligence agency obligingly plays into the hands of vested interests to slow down India's space programme. And a complex investigation finally proves the allegations untrue. In this riveting book, Isro scientist S Nambi Narayanan - who was falsely accused of espionage in ISRO spy case of the 1990s - and senior journalist Arun Ram meticulously unpick the ISRO spy case, revisit old material and discover new details to expose the international plot that delayed India's development of a cryogenic engine by at least a decade. It took four years for the CBI to exonerate Nambi, but his fight for justice to ensure action against the officers who faked the case and tortured him in custody continues. This book is as much a history of the early days of India's ambitious space programme as it is a record of one of the most sensational cases that enthralled the nation long before the era of online updates and 24-hour news cycles.

The book enables us to visualize the pinnacle of multiple historical events in rocket science and traces the origin of modern rocketry to India, its birthplace and cradle of multiple global innovations in the past and on track to rewrite the frontiers of innovation in future.

Discusses the history of rocketry and space travel, and describes a trip to the moon, as imagined in the 19th century and accomplished in the 20th century.