Place · rocket launch station · India
Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS)
Also known as TERLS, Thumba, Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre
India's first rocket launch site, established in 1963 at Thumba on the Kerala coast under Vikram Sarabhai's direction as a joint UN-India-NASA-Soviet facility sited exactly on the geomagnetic equator for upper-atmosphere studies. The land was donated by the local Catholic bishop after Sarabhai personally asked him; the first Nike-Apache rocket flew on 21 November 1963 from the lawn of the Mary Magdalene church that had become mission control. Thumba carried India's early sounding-rocket programme through to 1980 and remains active as the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre's launch range alongside Sriharikota.
- Date
- 1963–None
- Function
- Science & medicine
- Tradition
- ISRO institutional history; Sarabhai biographical sources.
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 8.533, 76.865
Worth knowing
The first launch pad was the Mary Magdalene church's lawn and the bishop's residence was mission control; the church still stands within the site and now functions as a space museum. Sarabhai is said to have cycled to the bishop's residence to make the land request personally in April 1962, which the bishop granted that same evening. The 1963 launch was carried by bullock cart from the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre workshops because the roads could not take the rocket's truck.
Connections (5)
- FoundedVikram Sarabhai
Vikram Sarabhai founded the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station on the Kerala coast in 1963 as India's first rocket launch site, sited exactly on the geomagnetic equator for upper-atmosphere studies. He personally obtained the land from the local Catholic bishop at Thumba — cycling to the bishop's residence and receiving the grant the same evening — and the Mary Magdalene church on the site became mission control for the first Nike-Apache launch on 21 November 1963. The site is now the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre and remains active alongside Sriharikota.
- Worked atA. P. J. Abdul Kalam
At the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram, Abdul Kalam led the Satellite Launch Vehicle project through the 1970s. SLV-3 placed the 35-kg Rohini satellite in low Earth orbit on 18 July 1980 — India's first fully indigenous orbital launch and the technical basis of every ISRO vehicle since.
- Founder ofVikram Sarabhai
Vikram Sarabhai founded the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station in 1963 on the magnetic equator near Thiruvananthapuram. The first sounding rocket was ferried to the site on a bicycle; launch control sat in St Mary Magdalene Church, converted into INCOSPAR's first office. In 1972 the station was renamed the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, ISRO's propulsion arm.
- OperatesISRO Headquarters, Bengaluru
ISRO HQ oversees the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre at Thumba, the propulsion arm.
- Peer institutionDRDO Bhawan, New Delhi
DRDO and ISRO both grew out of the Department of Atomic Energy / INCOSPAR launch infrastructure at Thumba in the 1960s.