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M D Riti in Bangalore
Will the next Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle go up within the next few hours from Sriharikota? This is the question that Indian Space Research Organisation scientists are asking, as the countdown for the flight of PSLV-C3 begins.
The vagaries of weather have clouded the launch and made ISRO, which never hesitates to announce its launches well in advance, stay mum over this proposed programme.
The agency's top brass, including chairman K Kasturirangan, are at the Sriharikota launch pad.
This PSLV carries an interesting payload in the form of a satellite described in ISRO's decade plan as an experimental technical payload. It is a Technology Evaluation Satellite, made, of course, in ISRO's satellite centre in Bangalore.
This PSLV will also carry two other satellites: PROBA, belonging to a Belgium company, and BIRD from the German space agency DLR.
This will be the second time that ISRO is doing a commercial launch, in the sense that it is being paid by DLR and the Belgian company to launch these satellites.
This is another step in the direction of the sale of satellite services by ISRO, a goal that Antrix, its commercial wing, is working towards.
What makes the satellite to be launched by the PSLV interesting is the debate about whether it can also be used for spying.
Most countries have launched spy satellites over the years. However, the Indian space programme is known to be a peace-oriented programme, and Kasturirangan spares no effort in reiterating this.
"We are purely a peace time programme devoted to achieving civilian objectives, economic development, communication and so on," he had told rediff.com. "We do not make or deploy spy satellites."
Until now, ISRO has maintained that data from its remote sensing satellites cannot be used for spying purposes, as their resolution is not good enough to enable the detection of man movement or even troop movement.
The question of whether the ISRO satellites' imagery could be used for spying initially came up after the Kargil invasion two years ago. Suddenly, everyone was wondering why ISRO had never given the country's armed forces any advance intimation about Pakistani movement on the Himalayan ranges.
The accusation made ISRO indignant. ISRO has always been wary of being linked with the Indian defence programme, a connection that is inevitable because the same rocket technology is used to make missiles and launchers. But scientists are now wondering how much longer the Indian space programme can remain completely sanitised and not help the government agencies.
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