India sends its 100th satellite into space to watch borders
new delhi — India launched its 100th satellite on Friday as Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks to project the country as a global lowcost provider of services in space.
A total of 31 small satellites were launched into space on Friday. More than half of the micro and nano satellites were for the Unites States, and the remainder India, Canada, Finland, France, South Korea and the United Kingdom.
“The launch of the 100th satellite by @isro signifies both its glorious achievements and also the bright future of India’s space programme,” Modi said on Twitter.
India’s space programme has a budget of around $4 billion and Modi’s government hopes the latest launches will improve its prospects of winning a larger share of the more than $300 billion global space industry.
“The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C40) deployed India’s 710-kg Cartosat and 10-kg nano satellite and 100-kg micro-sat along with 28 foreign satellites into the Earth’s orbit after a perfect lift-off from the launch pad,” said outgoing Indian Space Research Organisation Chairman A.S. Kiran Kumar at the mission control facility, about 80 km northeast of Chennai.
The four-stage rocket had deployed the Cartosat-2 in the sun synchronous orbit about 17 minutes 33 seconds after its lift-off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota High Altitude Range (SDSC-SHAR).
The Cartosat-2 was injected into its 505-km sun synchronous orbit. It has a five-year life span.
The 100-kg micro satellite, which was India’s 100th satellite, was slotted into its sun synchronous orbit, at an altitude of 359km above the Earth.
The mission control had fired the engines to restart the fourth stage for lowering the rocket to deploy the micro satellite in its intended orbit.
The first space mission in 2018 on board the PSLV-C40 comes four months after a similar rocket failed to deliver the country’s eighth navigation satellite in the earth’s lower orbit on August 31, 2017.
“We took rigorous measures to ensure that the heat shield issue that prevented the last mission (PSLV-C39) from deploying the satellites would not be repeated,” Kumar asserted.
The rocket carried a total of 31 satellites, among which three were Indian: Cartosat-2, nano satellite and micro satellite.
India will use its latest satellites for better border surveillance and obtaining high resolution images of the earth.
“PSLV-C40 is a highly sophisticated surveillance tool to keep an eye on Indian borders and will help the government track progress of infrastructure projects,” said Pallava Bagla, a science writer and coauthor of “Reaching for the Stars: India’s Journey to Mars.”
The performance of the deployed Cartosat-2 was satisfactory as monitored by the mission control facility, Kumar added.
As an observational satellite, Cartosat will beam high-quality images
The launch of the 100th satellite by @isro signifies both its glorious achievements and also the bright future of India’s space programme,”
for cartographic, urban and rural applications, coastal land use and regulation and utility management like road network monitoring.
“The performance of the launch vehicle was very impressive and followed its intended path perfectly,” said the newly appointed ISRO chief K. Sivan. “This mission proves that
Narendra Mo di@ na rend ra mo di
PSLV is a robust and reliable vehicle,” added the Director of SDSCSHAR, P. Kunhikrishnan.
Among the 28 international copassenger satellites that were deployed into multiple orbits, 19 belong to the US, five to South Korea and one each to Canada, France, the UK and Finland. —