A bullock-cart launch to 'see' space winds

A handful of Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) scientists and A P J Abdul Kalam were part of India's first rocket launch mission -which were sounding rockets -at Thumba in Thriruvananthapuram in 1963. Dr Praful Bhavsar, who was part of this mission, remembers how the father of India's space programme Vikram Sarabhai had gathered a team of young, hard working scientists to achieve this dream for the country .
A Catholic church in the coastal village of Thumba near Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala became the rocket assembly station, the local bishop's house was turned into a permanent office for visiting scientists from PRL and the rocket itself was transported to the Thumba launch site in a bullock cart. This was India's first rocket launch -the Nike-Apache sounding rocket on November 21, 1963.
“The sounding rocket was to determine high-altitude winds and their intimate connection to the complicated electrical current patterns that surround Earth. Kalam was in the team that injected the rocket with a chemical -trimethyl aluminum (TMA) -which formed milky , white clouds that allow those on the ground allow those on the ground to “see“ the winds in space and track them with cameras,“ says Bhavsar.
After India's success ful rocket launch in 1963, Indian scientists were experimenting with French Centaur sounding rockets. By 1966 the team was already assembling centaur rockets at the Thumba range.This drew the famous French photographer Henri Cartier Bresson to Thiruvananthapuram where he captured India's rocket launch story on film.