An injured employee of the Indian Space Research Organization being taken to the emergency ward of a hospital in Chennai on Feb. 23, after an accident at the space center. Six people died in the mishap. (Photo: AFP)

HYDERABAD/BANGALORE: Six people were killed and five others injured, two of them critically, in a blast on Feb. 23 at the Satish Dhawan Space Center at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, police said. Police officials said the accidental explosion in the high-security center occurred when a rocket motor caught fire and exploded while being filled with highly inflammable fuel at the solid propellant space booster plant (SPROBP).

Police and fire personnel rushed to the center at Sriharikota in Nellore district, about 270 miles south-east of Hyderabad.

The injured were initially taken to the hospital at the space center before being airlifted to a hospital at Chennai. Two of the injured are reported to be in a critical condition. The SPROBP produces composite solid propellants for rocket motors. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has set up a high-level committee to probe the blast.

Sriharikota is an island off the coast of Andhra Pradesh linked to Nellore by a bridge. A day after the mishap, ISRO declared that the accidental blast would not affect the country’s space program. An ISRO official told Indo-Asian News Service that space launches scheduled during the next six to eight months from the Satish Dhawan Space Center at Sriharikota would not be delayed by the accident. He said the accident had occurred in a new project for the development of next-generation launch vehicles involving upgradation of current rocket technologies.

“The launch of the Edusat satellite using the geo-synchronous satellite launch vehicle (GSLV-3) in June-July and Cartosat-1 using the polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV) in September-October will be undertaken as scheduled,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Even the new project in which the blast occurred would not be affected as the space center had a back-up facility to carry on the work.

“Since we are in a risky business, development of new technologies has its own ups and downs. As the upgradation of the existing launch vehicles involves a series of tests, such unforeseen mishaps do occur.”

Explaining that the cause of the accidental blast was a segment of a test rocket motor at the solid propellant space booster plant at Sriharikota, the official said a nine-member team was engaged in the operation at the time of the mishap. “It occurred when the team, consisting of an engineer, six technicians and two assistants, was removing fixtures after curing the rocket motor segment holding 14.5 tons of solid propellant.” During this operation, the highly inflammable propellant caught fire and caused severe damage to the plant.

Three members of the team ----- engineers Y. Krishna Prasad and S. Narayanan and tradesman S.K. Sachin ----- escaped from the building with severe burn injuries. Six others, who could not escape, were rapidly asphyxiated and burned by the intense heat. They were engineer Ramakrishna Prasad, senior technicians Basheer Saheb, N. Krishnaiah and Srinivasulu and assistants Pandit and Sanjiv.