PSLV puts 5 satellites in orbit

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) today successfully launched five satellites, including one designed by students, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota.

The domestically-built Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) put five satellites — including an advanced remote sensing satellite, Cartosat-2B, and small satellites from Algeria, Canada and Switzerland — into space.

At the end of an over 51-hour countdown, the 44.4 metre-tall four-stage PSLV-C-15, costing Rs 260 crore, blasted off from a launch pad with ignition of the core first stage and placed the satellites in orbit one after the other.

Visibly relieved scientists, headed by Isro chairman K Radhakrishnan, cheered as its workhorse PSLV soared into clear skies at 9.22 am from the spaceport in the east coast in Andhra Pradesh, about 100 km north of Chennai.

After about 20 minutes of flight time, the five satellites were successfully injected into its circular orbit of 637 km, according to an Isro release.

The preliminary flight data, according to Isro, indicates that all major flight events involving stage ignition and burnouts, performance of solid and liquid stages, indigenously developed advanced mission computers and telemetry systems were exactly as predicted.

Scientists termed it an “important launch for Isro” because it is the sixteenth consecutive successful flight of PSLV. Also, it would erase memories of a misfire a few months ago. Isro suffered a major setback in April, when the country’s ambitious home-made geosynchronous satellite launch vehicle GSLV-D3 failed and fell into the Bay of Bengal.

Cartosat-2B, built by Isro, will augment remote sensing data services to the users of multiple spot scene imagery with 0.8 metre spatial resolution and 9.6 km swath. Cartosat-2 and 2A, two Indian remote sensing satellites in orbit, presently provide such services. This is the latest in the Indian remote sensing satellite series and the seventeenth in this series.

PSLV-C15 carried four auxiliary satellites — Studsat a pico-satellite weighing less than 1 kg, built jointly by students from a consortium of seven engineering colleges from Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, two nano satellites NLS 6.1 and NLS 6.2 from University of Toronto, Canada, and Alsat-2A, a micro-satellite from Algerian Space Agency.