From Fishing Hamlet to Red Planet: India's Space Journey

On 21 November 1963 the first rocket took off from Thumba a fishing hamlet near Thiruvananthapuram announcing the birth of India's space programme. The rocket the payload the radar the computer the helicopter - all that was required for the launch - came from outside the country. Fifty years later on 5 November 2013 when ISRO launched its Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre Sriharikota all of it had been indigenously manufactured. Ten months after the launch on 24 September 2014 India became the first country in the world to put a satellite around the Red Planet in the very first attempt.

From Fishing Hamlet to Red Planet tracks this stupendous journey through articles interviews and reminiscences with contributions from intellectual giants like Dr Vikram Sarabhai Satish Dhawan M.S. Swaminathan Jacques Blamont Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam U.R. Rao and Dr K. Kasturirangan among others this is the story of India's space journey from its modest beginnings to its rendezvous with Mars.