Praful D. Bhavsar, a veteran of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) who passed away in Ahmedabad aged 97 on Saturday, had played an instrumental role in the very first sounding rocket launch from Thumba on November 21, 1963.
This, in the public mind, was the event which marked the beginning of India’s glittering space saga.
Dr. P.D. Bhavsar was project scientist and principal investigator for that first rocket-borne experiment from the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) which used an American-made Nike-Apache sounding rocket and a sodium vapour payload supplied by France.