ISRO, Norway and the ‘Svalbard mission’

Source: The post is based on the article “ISRO, Norway and the ‘Svalbard mission’”  published in The Hindu on 13th June 2023

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The Norwegian Ambassador has paid a visit to the ISRO Chairman. The meeting concluded with a mutual agreement on the importance of maintaining a continued partnership and fostering increased engagements between India and Norway in the field of space exploration and technology.

This visit offers an occasion to recall the challenging Svalbard mission which took place 26 years ago at Ny-Alesund, Svalbard.

About India-Norway Svalbard Mission in 1997

In 1997, 4 Scientists from Indian Space Research Organisation(ISRO) travelled to the Svalbard Rocket Range.

Antrix had signed an agreement with the Norwegian Space Centre for the sale of a Rohini RH-300 Mk.II Sounding Rocket.

The RH-300 Mk-II was given a new name by the Norwegian Space Centre as Isbjorn-1, which translates literally as ‘Polar Bear-I.’ 

On the technical side, the Norway mission presented unique challenges for ISRO. 

The Rohini rockets had till then flown only in the tropical hot and humid conditions in India. On the other hand, the Svalbard archipelago sits in the Arctic Ocean and temperatures were on the extremely low side.

ISRO had shipped the RH-300 Mk-II to Norway after qualifying it for arctic weather conditions.

However, the rocket, unfortunately, did not achieve the predicted height, rising only up to 71 km. 

The reason was a strange one. To keep the ambient temperature at 18 degrees Celsius, it was kept covered with a velostat shroud. The idea was that it would pierce through the cover during launch. Instead, the rocket dragged it along, and the increased drag resulted in a lower altitude.

Nevertheless, the Norwegian scientists seemed quite happy with the launch for the data collected during the flight led to some new findings.