Chennai: The 48-and-a-half hour countdown activities for India's first multi-orbital launch to place the satellites in two different orbits began on Saturday.
The PSLV-C35 rocket will be launched from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota at 9.12 am on Monday. The rocket will carry the 377 kg Scatsat-1 and seven co-passenger satellites into polar sun synchronous orbit.
“Scatsat-1, the weather satellite, will be placed in an orbit 720 km above the earth. Around two hours later it will put seven smaller satellites into an orbit 670 km above the earth. This is the first mission of PSLV in which it will be launching its payloads into two different orbits,” said K.Sivan, director, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram.
“Normally, after the fourth stage burns out the satellite will be injected into the orbit. Here, we are going to reignite the fourth stage (PS4) two times to inject the satellites into two different orbits,” he explained.
This entire mission will last for more than two hours and 15 minutes. “ScatSat-1 will be injected into the designated orbit after 17 minutes of the launch. After the injection, the fourth stage would be shut off. The PS4 will be reignited two times in the gap of 40 minutes for 20 seconds each to place the remaining satellites into their designated orbits,” he added.
The primary satellite of this mission is ScatSat-1. It will provide weather forecasting services to the user communities through the generation of wind vector products for weather forecasting, cyclone detection and tracking.
“ScatSat-1 is going to play a vital role for the climate modelling of the entire globe. Many international organisations including Indian scientists are eagerly looking for this launch,” said M.Annadurai, director, Isro Satellite Centre, Bengaluru.
Apart from ScatSat-1, Algeria's ALsat-1B, Alsat-2B, Alsat-1N satellites and USA's Pathfinder, Canada's NLS-19 satellite also will be launched during this mission.
This five micro and nano satellites are being launched for various objectives including the earth observation and remote sensing. IIT Bombay's Pratham and Bengaluru PES University's PISAT also will be launched. These two satellites will be used for studying electron count and remote sensing.
