ISRO launches Oceansat along with 8 other satellites

Scientists of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) began the countdown on Friday for the launch of Earth Observation Satellite – Oceansat along with eight other customer satellites on a PSLV-C54 rocket from the spaceport of Sriharikota on Saturday.

The 25.30 hours long = countdown for the 56^th flight of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), in its extended version (PSLV-XL), began at 10:26 am for the scheduled lift off at 11:56 am on Saturday. The lift off was from the first launchpad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, located 115 km from Chennai. The primary payload of the rocket is an Oceansat that will separate in orbit-1. Furthermore, the eight other nano satellites would be placed in different orbits according to the customer requirements (in the Sun-synchronous polar orbits).

According to the news portal NDTV, the mission would be one of the longest ones undertaken by the ISRO scientists who would engage the rocket to change orbits using two-orbit change thrusters (OCTs) used in the PSLV-C54 launch vehicle. The separation of the Earth Observation Satellite is expected to take place in orbit-1 while the passenger payloads would be separated in Orbit-2.

“After the primary satellite separation, the vehicle would be lowered to reach an altitude of 516 km for placing of the first passenger satellite. The last payload separation is expected to take place at an altitude of 528 km,” ISRO said. “The customer payloads include ISRO Nano Satellite-2 for Bhutan (INS-2B) which would have two payloads namely NanoMx and APRS-Digipeater. NanoMx is a multispectral optical imaging payload developed by Space Applications Centre while APRS-Digipeater payload is jointly developed by Department of Information Technology and Telecom, Bhutan, and U R Rao Satellite Centre, Bengaluru.”

The ‘Anand’ satellite is developed by Pixxel, and is a technology demonstrator to demonstrate the capabilities and commercial applications of miniature earth observation camera for observation using a micro-satellite in low earth orbit. The ‘Thybolt’ (two satellites) is developed by a start up Dhruva Space.