The 23rd Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) mission, the PSLV-C20, with the 409 kg Indo-French Joint Venture satellite Saral (Satellite with ARgos and ALtika) along with six auxiliary satellites, has blasted off from Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh at 6.01 pm.
The launch was delayed by five minutes from the actual launch time of 5.56 PM to avoid any debris in the flight path.
President Pranab Mukherjee witnessed the launch of 101th mission of ISRO.
It may be noted that the organisation had plans to launch Saral, in December 2012, which was then postponed to conduct some additional tests to address technical issues for ensuring reliability.
Saral is the first mission under Indian Mini Satellite (IMS) Bus series-2, configured for 400 KG class satellite with miniaturisation techniques.
The Saral mission, a joint venture of ISRO and French space agency Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), has two payloads- Payload Interface Module (PIM) containing ALtika and ARgos from CNES and Solid State C Band Transponder (SCBT) from VSSC, ISRO - to study the ocean from space using altimetry system and in promoting maximum use of the ARgos Data Collecting System.
The six smaller payloads include two from Canada, two from Austria and one each from Denmark and UK.
Sapphire (148 Kg), a satellite built by MacDonald, Dettwiler and Association (MDA), Canada, is a space based optical sensor system aimed at an operationally acceptable space based surveillance to contribute to the US Space Surveillance Network (SSN).
NEOSSat (Near-Earth Object Surveillance Satellite) (74 kg) is built by Microsat Systems Canada Inc (MSCI). The Satellite has a space telescope dedicated for detecting and tracking asteroids and satellites in Geo-stationary orbit.
NLS 8.1 (UniBRITE) (14 Kg) and NLS 8.2 (BRITE) (14 Kg) are two scientific satellites launched and operated by Austria. UniBRITE is built for the University of Vienna with a mission to photometrically measure low-level oscillations and temperature variations in stars brighter than visual magnitude with unprecedented precision and temporal coverage not achievable through terestrial based methods, BRITE is similar to the UniBRITE spacecraft, with the expectation of the optical flter within the payload, which is used to observe the blue region of the light spectrum.
NLS 8.3 (AAUSAT3) (3Kg) is the third student cubesat from Aalborg University in Denmark, which has device for feasibility study of receiving AIS signals from ships in arctic regions and a Phoenix GPS receiver from DLR, Germany.
The vehicle also carried STRaND-1, the first satellite in the series of Surrey Training, Research and Nanosatellite Development programme, built by SSTL (Surrey Training Technology Ltd), UK, to fly state-of-the art technologies and new developments in low Earth orbit.
This is the ninth mission of ISRO using PSLV Core Alone variant (without solid strap-on motors). There had been 21 continuously successful flights of PSLV, till September 2012, according to ISRO.
The Space Research Organisation has launched its 100th mission on September 9, 2012, launching PSLV-C21 taking a French satellite Spot-6 and a Japanese student satellite Proiteres into space from Sriharikota. The missions include 62 satellites, 37 launch vehicles and one space capsule recovery experiment.
The launch was delayed by five minutes from the actual launch time of 5.56 PM to avoid any debris in the flight path.
President Pranab Mukherjee witnessed the launch of 101th mission of ISRO.
It may be noted that the organisation had plans to launch Saral, in December 2012, which was then postponed to conduct some additional tests to address technical issues for ensuring reliability.
Saral is the first mission under Indian Mini Satellite (IMS) Bus series-2, configured for 400 KG class satellite with miniaturisation techniques.
The Saral mission, a joint venture of ISRO and French space agency Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), has two payloads- Payload Interface Module (PIM) containing ALtika and ARgos from CNES and Solid State C Band Transponder (SCBT) from VSSC, ISRO - to study the ocean from space using altimetry system and in promoting maximum use of the ARgos Data Collecting System.
The six smaller payloads include two from Canada, two from Austria and one each from Denmark and UK.
Sapphire (148 Kg), a satellite built by MacDonald, Dettwiler and Association (MDA), Canada, is a space based optical sensor system aimed at an operationally acceptable space based surveillance to contribute to the US Space Surveillance Network (SSN).
NEOSSat (Near-Earth Object Surveillance Satellite) (74 kg) is built by Microsat Systems Canada Inc (MSCI). The Satellite has a space telescope dedicated for detecting and tracking asteroids and satellites in Geo-stationary orbit.
NLS 8.1 (UniBRITE) (14 Kg) and NLS 8.2 (BRITE) (14 Kg) are two scientific satellites launched and operated by Austria. UniBRITE is built for the University of Vienna with a mission to photometrically measure low-level oscillations and temperature variations in stars brighter than visual magnitude with unprecedented precision and temporal coverage not achievable through terestrial based methods, BRITE is similar to the UniBRITE spacecraft, with the expectation of the optical flter within the payload, which is used to observe the blue region of the light spectrum.
NLS 8.3 (AAUSAT3) (3Kg) is the third student cubesat from Aalborg University in Denmark, which has device for feasibility study of receiving AIS signals from ships in arctic regions and a Phoenix GPS receiver from DLR, Germany.
The vehicle also carried STRaND-1, the first satellite in the series of Surrey Training, Research and Nanosatellite Development programme, built by SSTL (Surrey Training Technology Ltd), UK, to fly state-of-the art technologies and new developments in low Earth orbit.
This is the ninth mission of ISRO using PSLV Core Alone variant (without solid strap-on motors). There had been 21 continuously successful flights of PSLV, till September 2012, according to ISRO.
The Space Research Organisation has launched its 100th mission on September 9, 2012, launching PSLV-C21 taking a French satellite Spot-6 and a Japanese student satellite Proiteres into space from Sriharikota. The missions include 62 satellites, 37 launch vehicles and one space capsule recovery experiment.
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