The Hindu Business Line : ISRO creates record with 10-satellite launch

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) added another feather to its cap on Monday by putting in orbit Cartosat-2A, the remote sensing satellite with the best-ever Indian imagery resolution offer of 0.8 metre.

The same PSLV-C9 launcher delivered nine other satellites — the experimental Indian Mini Satellite IMS-1 and eight tiny commercial satellites — into a 637-km near-Earth orbit.

The record multiple launch of 10 satellites in one shot started at 9.20 a.m. and lasted around 20 minutes. It once again showcased ISRO’s space transportation capability in polar, 1,000-km distances aboard the PSLV launcher.

The ISRO Chairman, Mr G. Madhavan Nair, was reported as saying soon after the launch, “It is really a memorable moment. The mission was perfect and for the first time, 10 satellites were launched within one mission.

“We have set a record. Only Russia had so far tried to launch 13 satellites in a single launch and I am not sure whether that was successful.”

This was the 12th consecutive and successive PSLV flight from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota. The same PSLV is being used to loft the Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter mission later this year.

Cartosat-2A, with a life expectancy of five years, will complement Cartosat-2 that is already beaming 1-m imageries since January 2007. The 690-kg satellite is said to have cost Rs 240 crore.

“The highly agile Cartosat-2A is steerable along as well as across the direction of its movement. High-resolution data from it will be invaluable in urban and rural development applications that call for large-scale mapping,” ISRO said.

The eight nanosats were built by universities in Canada, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. Called NLS-4 (a cluster of six), NLS-5 and RUBIN-8, they together weigh 50 kg. ISRO’s commercial arm Antrix Corporation charged $600,000 (about Rs 2.4 crore) for their launch.

IMS-1 or the Indian Mini Satellite – earlier called the Third World Satellite (TWSAT) — incorporates many new technologies and has miniaturised sub-systems. Apart from the now common multi-spectral camera (Mx), it is testing a hyper-spectral camera (HySI) operating in the visible and near infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum.

“The data from this mission will be made available to interested space agencies and student community from developing countries,” ISRO said. IMS-1 is designed for two years.

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