THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The VSSC on Friday celebrated the 50th anniversary of the dedication of the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) to the UN by launching an RH200 sounding rocket from Thumba. ISRO chairman K Sivan said the sounding rocket was the seed from which all ISRO rockets have originated.
VSSC director S Somanath echoed the sentiment saying the ‘’learning ground’’ for the Indian space programmes was the sounding rockets. TERLS was dedicated to the UN by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the presence of Vikram Sarabhai and E M S Namboodiripad on February 2, 1968.
The first indigenously-built sounding rocket RH75 was launched on November 20, 1967, four years after India’s space programme officially lifted off from Thumba with the launch of the American sounding rocket Nike-Apache.