India launches 104 satellites from single rocket, breaking record

NEW DELHI — India’s space agency launched a flock of 104 satellites into space over the course of 18 minutes Wednesday, tripling the previous record for single-day satellite launches and establishing India as a key player in a growing commercial market for space-based surveillance and communication.

The launch was high-risk because the satellites, released in rapid-fire fashion every few seconds from a single rocket as it traveled at 17,000 mph, could collide with one another if ejected into the wrong path.

“They have spent months figuring out how to make an adapter, which will release these small babies into space one after another,” said Pallava Bagla, science editor for NDTV, a cable news station. “Now, all of them are in space.”

Wednesday’s launch was being watched closely by firms that place satellites in orbit, because India’s space agency charges substantially less than its competitors in Europe and North America, said C. Uday Bhaskar, the director of the Society for Policy Studies, a public policy research group based in New Delhi.

Eighty-eight of the satellites were tiny, weighing about 10 pounds. Called Doves, they belong to Planet Labs, a company based in San Francisco that sells data to governments and commercial entities, and they constituted the largest satellite constellation ever launched into space.

The chairman of the Indian space agency, A.S. Kiran Kumar, has said that commercial fees covered around half of the cost of Wednesday’s mission.

“I’m sure the global market will be looking at this pretty closely,” Bhaskar said. “If they can send 90 of them up for $10 million, hypothetically, then just by Moore’s Law, next time they should be able to send 120 satellites.”

Moore’s Law originated in the semiconductor industry and held that the number of components that could be crammed onto a computer chip would double at regular intervals.

The previous record was set by Russia’s space agency, which launched 37 satellites into orbit with one rocket in 2014.

India is fascinated with world records, and Wednesday’s satellite launch prompted a wave of celebratory crowing, some of it aimed at Asian rivals. Many declared it a “century,” a term for a cricketing milestone when a single batsman manages to score 100 runs in a single innings. The president, Pranab Mukherjee, called it “a landmark in the history of our space program,” while Alok Kumar Dubey, a right-wing activist, said on Twitter, “Look china, pak THIS is Our power.”