CHENNAI: The Indian Space Research Organisaion (ISRO) will be off to a rollicking start in the new year with a ‘world-record’ launch of 83 satellites in one mission on board PSLV C-37. The launch is being planned in the second week of January.
Of the 83, three would be Indian satellites and the remaining 80 foreign satellites with clients from the United States, Switzerland, Netherlands, Kazakhstan and Israel.
Speaking to Express, ISRO chairman S Kiran Kumar said the primary satellite would be India’s 700-kg Cartosat-2 series satellite, which is a remote sensing satellite useful for cartographic applications such as road network monitoring, water distribution, creation of land use maps, precision study, change detection to bring out geographical and manmade features and various other Land Information System (LIS) and Geographical Information System (GIS) applications. The other two Indian satellites will be small ones.
The foreign clientele is dominated by a single US-based company occupying close to 2/3rd of the payloads on board the rocket. “All satellites provided by the US company are low orbiting earth observation nano satellites. They are all being launched as part of a constellation of satellites,” Kiran Kumar said without revealing the name of the client due to non-disclosure agreements.
To a query, the ISRO chairman said he was not too keen on projecting the mission as a world-record endeavor. Though the ISRO has mastered the art of launching multiple satellites in one mission like it did in June early this year, where 20 satellites were launched including 19 foreign satellites, it is a challenge to put 83 satellites in the same orbit.
“All satellites will be put in the same orbit, which poses a different challenge,” he said and added that ‘XL’ version of PSLV equipped with six strap-ons would used for the mission.
K Sivan, director, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Thiruvananthapuram, told Express that the hardware for the rocket was getting ready. The immediate mission for the national space agency would be PSLV C-36, which is scheduled to be launched on December 4.
Interestingly, though the current state of US policy favours the rocket builders’ position and has restrictions on launch of commercial satellites from India, more US customers seem to be lining up before Antrix Corporation, the commercial arm of ISRO. Only this year, 12 4.7-kg Dove Earth observation satellites for Planet of San Francisco, formerly named Planet Labs and a 110-kg SkySat Gen2-1 Earth observation satellite, owned by Google’s Terra Bella of Mountain View, California were launched by ISRO. Besides, PlanetiQ PlanetiQ of Boulder, Colorado has booked a secondary payload slot in PSLV.
Certainly, the PSLV’s credibility and new-found capabilities have made India a preferred destination for launching commercial small satellites and the market is just growing in terms of numbers.