At the end of the 22.5 hour countdown, the 44.4 meter high rocket lifted off from the first launch pad at the pre-fixed 2.19 pm at the Satish Dhawan Space Center here, located about 135 km from Chennai.
ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle on Saturday successfully placed two Singaporean satellites into their intended orbit, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said.
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The satellites are part of the order secured by NewSpace India Ltd, ISRO’s commercial arm.
At the end of the 22.5 hour countdown, the 44.4 meter high rocket lifted off from the first launch pad at the pre-fixed 2.19 pm at the Satish Dhawan Space Center here, located about 135 km from Chennai.
ISRO Chief S Somanath said the PSLV placed the two satellites in the intended orbit. “The PSLV on its 57th mission has once again demonstrated its high reliability and its suitability for commercial missions of this type,” a beaming Somanath said from the Mission Control Center.
“In this mission, we have a single core PSLV configuration with many specialties and improvements that we have made to lower the cost of the rocket as well as the time to put it together. And this is the goal – to will increase the production and launch of PSLV in the coming times…,” added Somanath, also Secretary, Department of Space.
Mission Director SR Biju said the “fully dedicated commercial mission” was carried out with “the utmost precision.” The primary satellite TeLEOS-2 is a synthetic aperture radar satellite developed under a partnership between the Defense Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) representing the Government of Singapore and ST Engineering.
It will be used to support the satellite image required by various agencies within the Government of Singapore. TeLEOS-2 carries a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) payload. It is available to provide all-weather day and night coverage and is capable of imaging at one meter full polarimetric resolution for Singapore.
The co-passenger satellite is Lumelite-4, co-developed by the Institute for Infocomm Research and Satellite Technology and Research Center of the National University of Singapore.
It is an advanced 12U satellite developed for the technology demonstration of the High-Performance Space-borne VHF data Exchange System (VDES).
The goal of the satellite is to increase e-navigation maritime safety in Singapore and benefit the global shipping community, said ISRO.
The PSLV C55 mission was adopted on the concept of ‘integrate, transfer and launch’ using the PSLV integration facility at Sriharikota. This is also the 16th mission for ISRO using the PSLV Core Alone configuration.
Saturday’s mission follows the successful deployment of the TeLEOS-1 satellite on a PSLV-C29 rocket along with five other satellites in Singapore in December 2015.
First published in: 22-04-2023 at 16:21 IST