Isro and Tata Motors jointly Developing India's first fuel cell bus.

Tata Motors and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) announced the launch of India's first hydrogen-powered automobile bus. The bus was put on display at the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre, an Isro facility in Mahendragiri in Tamil Nadu on early June 2017. It's the culmination of a ten year research. 

It's a CNG-type bus that runs on hydrogen fuel, emitting no pollution. Hydrogen is stored in bottles at high pressure at the top of the bus. The hydrogen cells were a spin-off of the cryogenic technology that ISRO had developed a few years ago. ISRO has mastered space launch vehicle technology that involves producing, storing and handling gaseous and liquid hydrogen in the last three decades.

V Gnana Gandhi, honorary adviser of ISRO, led the technical team in this project. He said ISRO and the Tatas has signed an MoU in 2006 to design and develop an automobile bus using hydrogen as a fuel through fuel cell route. Mr. Gandhi said: "This is a leap for automobile industry for future transportation. In this vehicle there will be zero pollution since the product of cold combustion is water. This is a result of great team work of Tata Motors and ISRO specialists with contributions from DSIR (department of scientific and industrial research) and PESO (Petroleum and Explosive Safety Organisation)."

As hydrogen is emerging as leading contender for the ideal energy options of the future, the Union Government may make this mandatory for all new buses soon.

Meanwhile ISRO is preparing to launch it's monstrous rocket beast GSLV-Mk3 aka LVM3 on this 5th of June , 2017.

Hyderabad : Blog report on ISRO's GSLV-Mark3 or LVM3

GSLV Mk III - D1/GSAT19 Mission is scheduled to be launched on June 05, 2017 at 17:28 Hrs(IST) from SDSC SHAR, Sriharikota, Nellore , Andhra Pradesh, India.

The countdown is about to begin on This sunday for the launch of GSLV - Mark III on June 5, ISRO indicates that it is the first possible human-rated vehicle with its complex yet robust design features for future manned mission, technology and unique shape to check noise.

"The critical technology of GSLV Mk III to carry heavy payload capacity, the vehicle design with acoustic suppression system would facilitate future manned missions to space. But, we prefer not to talk about manned mission now when it is yet to be approved by the GOI ," ISRO chairman AS Kiran Kumar quoted.

The focus of this first developmental flight of GSLV-MK III (D1) set for launch on June 5 is to put a heavy weight communication satellites like GSAT-19 of 3.2 tons in geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO),GSLV Mk III is actually capable of putting 4 ton class satellites into GTO and future machines will achieve that, he said.

This fat boy is equipped with a made in India cryogenic engine of an advanced version of 20 plus ton thrust. Previously, four consecutive GSLV launches with indigenous cryogenic engine of a different version were successful, he said.

The former space port of India , Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) director K Sivan told that now this GSLV-MK III launch is a big fat vehicle launch with its design is capable to put four ton class heavy satellite in orbit. From the earlier cone shaped launch vehicle, here it is Ojive shaped and the strap-on boosters are slanted rather than the usual straight format, it is to lessen noise. It could help in future manned mission, he said.

The Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC) director S Somnath also told that "GSLV-MK III is a possible human-rated launch vehicle by virtue of its design features including its simple module, its technology for lesser propulsion system, lesser accelerator levels, lesser dynamic pressure load and lesser noise or benign acoustic levels" Further, it has more redundancy which means that if an electronic part fails other part will take over the task to propel the vehicle forward, he said.

It may be noted that the term `human-rated' certifies a spacecraft, launch vehicle or airplane as worthy of transporting humans.

GSLV project director G Ayyappan also indicated that it is for the first time that a launch vehicle is designed with Ogive shaped curvature to able to control the air pressure and to check noise with its acoustic suppression system. Conceived in 2002 at a total project cost of Rs 2900 crore, the GSLV-MK III will be fitted with a fully indigenous cryogenic engine of 20 ton thrust with 28 ton propellant loading, LPSC scientists said.

This cryogenic engine has 2.5 times more thrust than the previous cryogenic engine with 12 ton thrust. Similarly, this launch will have 2.46 times more thrust with two solid motors and 2.1 times more thrust of liquid boosters with 116 tons of liquid propellants loaded as against the earlier 40 tons, VSSC scientists said.