4 sheds, 3 crores, 2 nations, 1 dream: Story of India Aryabhata

Prof MGK Menon (2nd from left), Prof UR Rao (4th from left), K Kasturirangan (extreme right) and a few others from team Aryabhata

Jawahar, Maitri. Remember these two names. We’ll orbit back to them soon. For now, let’s travel back to half a century ago:
A chill breeze rustled through the vast Russian steppe as countdown “10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-0” began post noon at Kapustin Yar Cosmodrome, some 3,200km from New Delhi, where a young team of Indian scientists waited anxiously.
They heard ‘Payyakali’ — a Russian expression first uttered by Yuri Gagarin at the time of his historic manned flight, meaning ‘let us go’ — and saw their 358kg dream soaring aboard Kosmos-3M rocket, at 1:28:55pm, Indian time.
It was Saturday, April 19, 1975. Everything had been meticulously prepared for this moment, with Indian scientists working tirelessly over the course of 40 days in Russia. Every detail had been scrutinised. Despite the distant location and the challenges of the task, the young Indian team, fresh from academic pursuits and filled with an unshakeable resolve, had brought Aryabhata, India’s first satellite, to life.

“The weather suddenly changed with the dawn of the new day. The Sun started shining brightly through a cloud-free sky despite the thermometer hovering around 10°C, ready to herald the significant event of the birth of a new space power in the world,” Aryabhata’s project director Prof UR Rao described the day many years later.
Fifty years to this day, it’s worth knowing that not everything in the run-up was as friendly as the Soviets, their weather, or as smooth as the Kosmos-3M’s launch on that day. As the cliche goes, let’s start from the beginning.
Heavier than China
In 1971, as India toyed with the idea of building a 100kg scientific satellite compatible with a Scout rocket, PM Indira Gandhi forwarded Vikram Sarabhai a letter from DP Dhar, the Indian ambassador in Moscow. The Soviets were open to assisting India in space. Sarabhai swiftly arranged a meeting with Soviet ambassador Nikolai Pegov. Udupi Ramachandra Rao was summoned to present India’s case.

Aryabhata statue in IUCAA campus Pune

“After patiently hearing me for 30 minutes, the ambassador asked about the weight of China’s first satellite. When I said around 190kg, he insisted India’s must be heavier — and said the USSR would launch it, whatever the weight,” Rao later recounted.
Sarabhai’s sudden demise in Dec 1971 didn’t stall progress. Under Prof MGK Menon — a renowned cosmic-ray physicist holding interim charge of Isro — a joint meeting with Soviet experts to finalise Indo-Soviet space cooperation was held in Thiruvananthapuram in Feb 1972. Before this, Menon voiced his reservations to Rao.
“If we want to enter space and use it for national development, this is our best chance. With a free launch and minimum expenditure, we can build satellite technology and grow from there,” Rao said.
Menon briefed PM Gandhi in Delhi, then joined the Thiruvananthapuram talks. Her response was positive — but she wanted to know the cost. Menon connected Rao to her. “Madam, give me three hours…”
Rao assembled a core team — SP Kosta, K Kasturirangan, R Ashiya, and Tarsem Singh — and asked for a cost estimate. They returned with Rs 60 lakh.
“You can’t get half the space-qualified components for that! Do you even know how much they cost?” Rao exclaimed. He reworked the numbers with them, arriving at Rs 3 crore, with Rs 1 crore in foreign exchange. He relayed the figure to Gandhi.

“Go ahead and sign the agreement,” she said. On May 10, 1972, a historic Indo-Soviet agreement was signed between M Keldysh, president of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and Menon. It outlined the launch of India’s first satellite — yet unnamed — from a Soviet cosmodrome. VM Kovtunenko was appointed Soviet project director; Rao led the Indian side.
Tin sheds in Peenya
Next: where to build it? Bangalore or Hyderabad? Bangalore won. With help from Karnataka’s industries secretary Satish Chandran, Rao secured four bare industrial sheds — 5,000 sqft each — in the then-nascent Peenya Industrial Estate.
These sheds were transformed at astonishing speed. Two became specialised control electronics labs, including a 1,500-sqft clean room for satellite integration. On Ganesh Chaturthi, September 11, 1972, they were informally inaugurated.

A handful of scientists grew into a 150-strong team working round-the-clock. But procurement was a major hurdle. Undeterred, Isro formed a special procurement team led by Rao, with TN Seshan and YS Rajan. They travelled across Europe and the US, placing spot orders and bypassing red tape to secure equipment affordably — and fast.
On July 11, 1974, PM Gandhi visited Peenya. As she looked into the clean room where Aryabhata’s flight model was being finalised, her face lit up with quiet pride. This wasn’t just a machine — it was India’s boldest declaration of scientific intent.
Jawahar? Maitri? No — Aryabhata!
At the final project board meeting in March 1975 — just a month before launch — the team discussed names. The options: Aryabhata (after the ancient Indian astronomer), Jawahar (for independence), and Maitri (for Indo-Soviet friendship). Now, orbit back to where we started.

Aryabhata during its integration.

“As expected, Mrs Gandhi picked Aryabhata,” Rao recalled. A special stamp was planned to mark the launch. To account for a possible one-day delay, two sets were printed — for April 19 (the scheduled date) and April 20 (backup). The launch succeeded on April 19, and the second set was destroyed.
Goal, challenges & achievements
Aryabhata was designed and built in just 30 months by a young team of Indian scientists and engineers, working with scarce resources. The quasi-spherical satellite, measuring 1.59m across and weighing 358kg, had primary objectives of: technological demonstration and scientific research in X-ray astronomy, aeronomy, and solar physics.
Its 26-faced polyhedron structure was covered with solar cells generating 46W, supported by a Ni-Cd battery. It employed passive thermal systems and cold gas jets for spin stabilisation, demonstrating sophisticated engineering.
A notable feature was its data handling capability—monitoring 91 parameters with time resolutions from 250 ms to 4 secs, transmitting at 256 bits/sec. In playback mode, this was 2,560 bits/sec, impressive for its time.
With its launch into a LEO orbit — 50.7° inclination, 619km apogee, 568km perigee — Aryabhata established a foundation for future satellites.

All on-board systems functioned perfectly until the satellite experienced tumbling at 0.3° per second instead of maintaining stable spin, and the aeronomy instrument’s power supply failed. However, engineers stabilised the satellite at 50 revolutions/minute by the 45th orbit. In five days, it went silent but its mainframe remained active until March 1981 and the satellite itself remained in orbit until its atmospheric re-entry on Feb 10, 1992.
Despite power issues affecting scientific experiments, initial data yielded significant discoveries. The X-ray instrument measured intensity from the complex “Cyg-X1” source during an upward emission transition and characterised X-ray emission from numerous sources. The payload measured neutron and gamma ray fluxes from the quiet sun and latitudinal distribution of high-energy neutrons.
Several technological experiments relevant to future programmes were successfully conducted, including satellite tracking using tone ranging, voice and data communication between USSR and Bangalore, tele-medicine experiments connecting remote rural areas with city hospitals, and meteorological data transmission as a precursor to later data relay experiments on Insat.
Aryabhata’s most significant impact was establishing a firm foundation in satellite technology, creating a confident core team for building more complex operational satellites, and developing infrastructure for India’s future satellite programme.
“No failure on Aryabhata was perceived as a failure. It might sound cliched, they were stepping stones for future success,” , Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium director, BR Guruprasad, who had spent 39 years at Isro before his current role, said.