ISRO rocket places seven satellites into orbit

The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) C-20 blasts off carrying seven satellites from the Satish Dhawan space centre at Sriharikota yesterday.

IANS/Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh

An Indian rocket yesterday successfully placed into orbit seven satellites, including the Indo-French satellite SARAL, in copybook style.

A little after 6pm, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle-C20 (PSLV-C20) standing 44.4m tall and weighing around 230 tonnes hurtled towards the skies ferrying the seven satellites together weighing 668.5kg.

President Pranab Mukherjee witnessed the first of the 10 space missions planned by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for 2013 and also the country’s 101th space mission.

With a rich orange flame at its tail and a plume of white fume, the rocket ascended towards the evening skies amid the resounding cheers of ISRO scientists and a media team assembled at the launch centre.

People perched atop nearby buildings too happily clapped as PSLV-C20 went up towards the heavens.

Scientists at ISRO’s new rocket mission control room were glued to their computer screens watching the rocket escaping the earth’s gravitational pull.

At around 18 minutes into the flight PSLV-C20 spat out SARAL satellite. The following four minutes saw the rocket ejecting the world’s first smart phone-operated nano satellite, a space telescope satellite and four other foreign satellites in their intended polar orbit.

Immediately on the successful ejection of the seven satellites, scientists at the mission control centre were visibly relieved and started clapping happily.

Mukherjee congratulated the scientists. “Delighted to witness the remarkable launch of the PSLV. I congratulate ISRO for successfully executing the mission,” he said.

ISRO chairman K Radhakrishnan said: “It’s a successful launch.”

The launch of the satellites takes ISRO’s tally of launching foreign satellites to 35. ISRO started putting into space third-party satellites for a fee in 1999 on its PSLV-C2 rocket.

Since then India has been successful in launching medium-weight satellites for overseas agencies. Initially ISRO started carrying third-party satellites atop PSLV rockets as co-passengers of its own remote sensing/earth observation satellites.

In 2007, ISRO for the first time launched an Italian satellite - Agile - as a standalone for a fee.

India began its space journey in 1975 with the launch of Aryabhatta using a Russian rocket and so far it has completed 102 space missions.

Interestingly the PSLV is carrying seven satellites for the second time after having done so in September 2009.

The highest number of satellites put into orbit at one go by the PSLV rocket was 10 in April 2008.

Two of the SARAL satellite’s payload (ARGOS and ALTIKA) has been supplied by the French National Space Agency CNES while the solid state C-band transponder is from ISRO.

The SARAL will study the sea surface heights and the data generated will be shared by the two countries.

Indian space agency officials said the data from SARAL will be useful for operational as well as research user communities in fields like marine meteorology and sea state forecasting; operational oceanography; seasonal forecasting; climate monitoring; ocean, earth system and climate research; continental ice studies; protection of bio-diversity; management and protection of the marine eco-system; environmental monitoring and improvement of maritime security.

According to ISRO, the SARAL satellite is the first under the Indian mini-satellite Bus-series 2 configured for 400kg satellites.

The Indian space agency states this satellite frame is envisaged to be the workhorse for different types of operational missions in the coming years.