CHENNAI: There are many things you can miss in this world, but a night launch by ISRO is not one of them. Pitch black skies around Sriharikota lit up at precisely 9.58 PM on Friday, providing skywatchers a fantastical view of what a shooting star might look like - if it suddenly decided to return to the realms of its birth. The PSLV-C28 had embarked on its 30th launch - ferrying its heaviest commercial load yet - a whopping 1440 kg.
17 minutes later, the first of the five UK built satellites - DMC3-1 was injected into its intended orbit. The next two minutes saw the next four - DMC3-2, 3, CBNT-1 and De-OrbitSail injected. All in textbook precision.
All through what we have been conditioned to think of as nail bitingly nervous moments, the mission control room presented a picture of not just calm, but even a few seeming moments of complacency - a sign of just how far the PSLV mission has come in its 23 years of history. For the technicians who oversaw the mission, it was business as usual.