From The Archives: 20 Years Ago In Aviation Week - Third World Rising

Twenty years ago we published a focus on India's space program. We noted that it was built on a shoestring to benefit the country's poor and its military, when it launched its first rocket 41 years ago. "Now it wants to take on a larger role beyond the subcontinent." 

It is pushing its space industry into the international arena as a buyer, seller, and potential exploration partner. 

In this feature package, we discuss how India is testing technology, how their first geostationary communications satellite was loaded onto a bullock cart (see the image on page 48), and how India's president, at age 73, is considered a space and missile pioneer, widely respected as a poet, educator spiritualist, philosopher, writer and rocket scientist, "rolled into one".

Read this article and other features on the Indian space program in our Nov. 22, 2004 issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology. 

Application Driven - Satellites serve Indian villages

World Class - New launch complex on the Bay of Bengal open for business with low-cost rockets

Dare To Dream - Indian president draws on a career in space, missile work to design his nation's future

Read the feature package from page 46 to 52.

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