ISRO's PSLV rocket to launch two international satellites on Sunday

Chennai: After a gap of five months, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will resume its launch operations on Sunday (September 16) by putting two international satellites into space on a PSLV rocket.

In a dedicated commercial mission, the PSLV-C42 rocket will carry two earth observing satellites, NovaSAR and S1-4 of Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL), the UK from the first launch pad at Sathish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.

The rocket will be launched on Sunday night at 10.07 pm. The 33-hour countdown for the launch will commence on Saturday at 1.07 pm. 

 NovaSAR with S-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and automatic identification receiver will be used in forest mapping, land use and ice cover monitoring, flood and disaster monitoring, ship detection and maritime monitoring.

S1-4 is a high-resolution optical earth observation satellite. It is intended to survey resources, environment monitoring, urban management and disaster monitoring.

Both the satellites weigh around 889 kg. They will be launched into a 583 km Sun Synchronous Orbit in 17 minutes.

Commenting about the gap in launch missions, Isro chairman K.Sivan said, “We have prepared all our satellites and launch vehicles which required time.”

Isro is having a hectic launching schedule, “During the next six months we plan to launch 18 missions including 8 launch missions and 10 spacecraft missions including Chandrayaan-2 and GSAT-29 spacecraft,” he said. 

In the previous mission, PSLV-C41 has successfully replaced IRNSS-1A satellite with IRNSS-1I on April 12. It was the second attempt after the failure of PSLV-C39 to launch IRNSS-1H last year.

Since lift-off mass is around 230 tonnes, PSLV rocket will not have any boosters and it will be core alone configuration.