HOW A CHURCH CONVERTED INTO A SPACE STATION (ISRO-1)

In the 1960s, Thumba was a small fishing village on the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram city. But for the country's space scientists, the location was exceptional as it was very close to the earth's magnetic equator. As APJ Abdul Kalam mentioned in his autobiography Wings of Fire, "The site selected at Thumba lay between the railway line and the sea coast, covering a distance of about two and a half km and measuring about 600 acres. Within this area, stood a large church, whose site had to be acquired."

Vikram Sarabhai met with the bishop, Reverend Peter Bernard Pereira, who readily agreed to give the church over for space research. The fishermen and their families were promised jobs in the premises and they also moved out. That church housed the first unit of the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launch Station (TERLS), which was later named the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre. Kalam wrote: "The St. Mary Magdalene church housed the first office of the Thumba Space Centre. The prayer room was my first laboratory, the bishop's room was my design and drawing office."

The room in the small bishop's house, which became Kalam's office, had nondescript, basic office furniture: a table and a chair - it was here that Kalam plotted the trajectory of India's space science. That room is kept the way he had left it. When he became the president of India, he was taken to the room and showed that nothing had been changed. He sat on that chair, once again, as cameras clicked away. The photograph is now kept on the table with some plastic flowers. For VSSC's scientists, this is sanctum sanctorum

India's first rocket launch took place here on November 21, 1963. "It was a sounding rocket, called Nike-Apache, made at NASA. The rocket was assembled in the church building," wrote Kalam. That was the time when the assembled rocket was shifted from the church building to the launch pad by truck. Later, the payload for the Rohini launch was famously transported on a bicycle.

The church building is now a space museum, housing rocket models and more. One of the smallest models is the most significant: the Satellite Launch Vehicle, SLV-3, designed by Kalam. It was India's first SLV. Launched successfully on July 18, 1980, it injected a 40 kilo Rohini satellite into a low earth orbit. It was just 23-metre-long and weighed 17 tonnes at liftoff. Though it was tiny by world standards, it made India a member of space-faring countries. Kalam himself said: "A small vehicle, no doubt, but a giant leap for the nation."

That leap began in a church. In return for the generous, unquestioning support of Reverend Pereira and his parish, ISRO

built two churches for them near Thumba.

It was as if Mary Magdalene had reserved the most ideal spot for India's space mission much in advance.

Way back in 1962, two visionary scientists of Indian Atomic Energy, Homi Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai, were scouting for a suitable spot to start a space research station when, deep down along the Kerala coast, they came across an imposing red stone church dedicated to Saint Mary Magdalene, the woman to whom Jesus Christ first appeared after resurrection.

The church was within a vast 600-odd acres between the coast and a railway line in an obscure hamlet called Thumba, and what interested Bhabha and Sarabhai was that it was almost on the earth's magnetic equator.

Work is worship

The magnificent church was converted into the first office of the Thumba Space Centre. But the sandalwood statue of Mary Magdalene was kept where it was, above the altar, hovering over young scientists like a guardian angel as they went about assembling the country's first rockets.

The church's prayer room was the scientists' first laboratory and the bishop’s quarters nearby was the first design and drawing office. Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) was thus established, and out of it came, butterfly-like, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

The new Mary Magdalene Church came up a few kilometres north in a considerably smaller area, in 4.37 acres in a barren godforsaken land along the coast called Pallithura. The new school was built across the road from the church, on 3.39 acres. The displaced families, too, were rehabilitated in 10 cents each in Pallithura.

TO BE CONTINUED........⚛️

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