ISRO's longest-ever PSLV satellite launch: 10 things to know!

New Delhi: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully completed its longest-ever mission on Monday - launching eight satellites, including weather satellite SCATSAT-1, from one rocket into two different orbits.

 

As per ISRO, the 320 tonne Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle rocket (PSLV-C35) carrying eight satellites - three Indian and five foreign - was lifted off from the first launch pad of Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota at 9:12 hours (IST) on September 26. The total weight of all the eight satellites is about 675 kg. The countdown for the launch of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) began at 8.42 a.m. on Saturday.

 

Here are some key points you should know about know about ISRO’s longest-ever flight:

• The PSLV-C35 rocket, in its 37th mission, placed, Indian SCATSAT-1 weighing about 371 kg, into a 730 km polar sun synchronous orbit, 17 minutes into the flight.
• The remaining seven satellites – two other Indian satellites and five foreign - were injected in a 689 km polar orbit nearly two hours later.
• This is ISRO's longest PSLV satellite launch mission spread over two hours and fifteen minutes.
• SCATSAT-1 (Scatterometer Satellite-1) is a miniature satellite developed by ISRO to provide weather forecasting, cyclone prediction, and tracking services to India. The mission life of the satellite is 5 years.
• Besides SCATSAT-1, the two other Indian satellites are: Pratham (10kg), which will study the total electron count in space, built by Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B) and Pisat (5.25 kg) from PES University, Bengaluru and its consortium. PISAT carries an imaging camera as payload to capture imagery of Earth’s surface.
• The five foreign satellites are: three from Algeria (Alsat-1B 103kg, Alsat-2B 117kg, Alsat-1N 7kg), and one each from Canada (NLS-19, 8kg) and US (Pathfinder-44kg).
• This is the first time that ISRO used the multiple burn technology for launching satellites. Multiple burn technology is the switching off and switching on of a rocket's engine in space.
• ISRO said this launch is the fifteenth flight of PSLV in 'XL' configuration with the use of solid strap-on motors.
• It is also the second time that ISRO puts many satellites into different orbits during a single launch mission.
• Till date, the PSLV has launched 39 remote-sensing satellites of ISRO, including the Chandrayaan-1 of 2008 and the Mars mission of 2013-14.