The ISRO successfully launched its PSLV-C56 rocket carrying seven Singaporean satellites from Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota on Sunday. The satellites have been placed into their intended orbits.
The lift-off happened after a 25-hour countdown that commenced on Saturday. The 44.4-metre tall rocket lifted off from the first launch pad at the spaceport at 6.31 am. Twenty-three minutes after lift-off, the primary satellite got separated and it was followed by six other co-passenger satellites, which were deployed into the intended orbits sequentially, ISRO said.
"PSLV-C56/DS-SAR Mission: The mission is successfully accomplished. PSLV-C56 vehicle launched all seven satellites precisely into their intended orbits. Thanks to @NSIL_India and Singapore, for the contract," a tweet by the space agency read.
"After injecting all the Singapore satellites into the intended orbit at an altitude of about 536 km, the upper stage of the rocket will be placed in lower orbit to ensure its reduced orbital life at an altitude of about 300 km," ISRO said in a statement.
The PSLV-C56 / DS-SAR was the Dedicated Commercial Mission of NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) for ST Engineering, Singapore. While DS-SAR, a Radar Imaging Earth Observation satellite, is the primary one, six other co-passenger customer satellites were also placed in orbit. The DS-SAR satellite carries a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) payload developed by Israel Aerospace Industries. This allows DS-SAR to provide for all-weather day-and-night coverage and is capable of imaging at 1-metre resolution.
The DS-SAR satellite will be used to support the satellite imagery requirements of various agencies in Singapore.
This is the 58th flight of PSLV and the 17th flight of PSLV in Core Alone configuration. The Core Alone version of the rocket means the vehicle would not use solid strap-on motors on its sides in the first stage as compared to other variants like PSLV-XL, QL, and DL which use six, four or two boosters, respectively.
Co-passenger satellites
The co-passenger satellites are 1. VELOX-AM, a 23-kg technology demonstration microsatellite, 2. Atmospheric Coupling and Dynamics Explorer (ARCADE), an experimental satellite 3. SCOOB-II, a 3U nanosatellite flying a technology demonstrator payload, 4. NULloN by NuSpace, an advanced 3U nanosatellite enabling seamless Internet of Things connectivity in both urban and remote locations, 5. Galassia-2, a 3U nanosatellite that would be orbiting at low earth orbit and 6. ORB-12 STRIDER, a satellite developed under international collaboration.
Unique experiment
The ISRO said it will attempt a unique experiment using the fourth stage of the PSLV-C56 rocket. While the mission is a follow-up to the PSLV-C55 TeLEOS-2 mission launched in April this year, scientists in today's mission will try to place the fourth stage of the PSLV rocket in a lower orbit.
"PS4 (fourth stage) will be de-orbited to Low Earth circular orbit in a 300x300 km, using left out propellants to reduce orbital life of spent PS4 stage," ISRO said.
In April, during the launch of PSLVC55 mission in April, scientists successfully performed another unique experiment where the fourth stage of the PSLV rocket was utilised as an orbital platform to carry out scientific experiments using the PSLV Orbital Experimental Module (POEM) in the rocket.
(With inputs from PTI)