Thiruvananthapuram: February 15 will see one rocket PSLV - C37 carrying 104 satellites from Satish Dhavan Space Centre at Sriharikota. All the 104 satellites will be launched on Wednesday at 9.28 am from Sriharikota.
Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre director Dr K. Sivan told DC that the higher number of satellites in this mission demands adopting innovative approaches and taking higher degree of care in the mission design.
“Carrying 104 satellites is not technologically a great thing. The main challenge before us is how to assemble and separate them as no two satellites should not collide with the rockets. We are arranging it in the same orbit and then separating it at different locations as well as in different directions”, said Sivan to DC. PSLV – C37 is the 39th launch of PSLV launch vehicle.
The US is sending the maximum number with a whopping 96 satellites –DOVE (Flock 3P) and Israel (BGU Sat), Kazakhstan (Al-Farabi -1), Switzerland (Dido 2), United Arab Emirates (Nayif -1) and Netherlands (PEASS) sending one each to the orbit.
For the first time, eight cameras will be put in to use for Video Imaging System to capture the separation events of various propulsion stages and satellites. The 44.4 metre long PSLV – C37 vehicle will have a lift off mass of 321 kg and will be launched from First Launch Pad, SDSC at Sriharikota. Cartosat-2 Series satellite is an advanced Remote Sensing satellite built by ISRO. The Cartosat-2 Series satellite imageries will be used for cartographic applications, urban and rural applications, coastal land use and regulation, utility management like road network, 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) & Geo Information System (GIS) applications.
