History
The ASLV made four launches, of which one was successful, two failed to achieve orbit, and a fourth achieved a lower than planned orbit which decayed quickly. The type made its maiden flight on 24 March 1987, and its final flight on 4 May 1994.
Three successive failures plunged the project into a crisis. ISRO scientist had to confront new technological challenges and one of the important design changes was the addition of the 2 strap on boosters attached to either side of the first stage. Strap on separation, bulbous heat shield, "closed loop" guidance system as opposed to the "open loop" guidance system of the SLV-3 and heat shield management and separation had to be adapted by the scientists. However, all the problems and new technological challenges were overcome with ISRO's customary resolve and zeal, and the important ASLV program crossed an important rubicon.
Read more about this topic: Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We said that the history of mankind depicts man; in the same way one can maintain that the history of science is science itself.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“History ... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
But what experience and history teach is this—that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)