Chennai: The Indian space agency will February 25 put into orbit seven foreign satellites including an Indo-French collaborative satellite SARAL and thus earn much wanted revenue.
"The launch of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle-C20 (PSLV-C20) is currently fixed for February 25 evening," sources in the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said.
"The rocket will blast off from the Sriharikota rocket launch centre (around 80 km from here) carrying seven satellites, totally weighing around 700 kg," a source in ISRO said.
According to ISRO, the rocket is expected to escape the earth's gravitational force at around 6 pm and inject the satellites in sun synchronous orbit (SSO) at around 785 km.
Officials said that assembly of satellites began on Thursday afternoon and is expected to be completed by Friday night.
After mating the satellites with the rocket, a full system check - rocket and satellites - will be carried out before fixing the heat shield, the protective gear that safeguards the satellites against damages when the rocket crosses the atmosphere.
The other four satellites to be carried by PSLV-C20 are BRITE and UniBRITE (both Austria), STRAND (Britain) and AAUSAT (Denmark).
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