Sriharikota (Andhra Pradesh): The Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) PSLV-C56 rocket on Sunday placed all seven Singaporean satellites into the near-equatorial orbit (NEO) after its successful launch from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota.
The rocket got separated about 23 minutes after the lift-off and deployed the satellites to their intended orbits with clinical precision after covering a distance of 535 km.
The PSLV-C56, carrying DS-SAR satellite along with six co-passengers lifted off from its launchpad at 6:31 am. “This is a PSLV mission for New Space India Limited (NSIL) and I want to congratulate the customers sponsored by the Government of Singapore for having this mission onboard PSLV and their continued faith in our launch vehicle for deploying their spacecraft,” ISRO Chairman S Somnath said after the successful launch of the mission.
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The DS-SAR satellite is developed under a partnership between DSTA (representing the Government of Singapore) and ST Engineering. Once deployed and operational, it will be used to support the satellite imagery requirements of various agencies within the government of Singapore. ST Engineering will use it for multi-modal and higher responsiveness imagery and geospatial services for their commercial customers.
DS-SAR carries a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) payload developed by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). This allows the DS-SAR to provide for all-weather day and night coverage and is capable of imaging at 1m resolution at full polarimetry.
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The co-passengers on the missions are VELOX-AM, a 23 kg technology demonstration microsatellite, ARCADE Atmospheric Coupling and Dynamics Explorer (ARCADE) which is an experimental satellite, SCOOB-II, a 3U nanosatellite flying a technology demonstrator payload, NuLIoN by NuSpace, an advanced 3U nanosatellite enabling seamless IoT connectivity in both urban and remote locations,
Galassia-2, a nanosatellite, that will be orbiting the earth’s LEO and ORB-12 STRIDER is a satellite developed under an International collaboration.
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It is the 58th flight of PSLV and 17th of PSLV in core alone configuration.
