PSLV-C18 Successfully Launches Megha-Tropiques

ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C18) proved its mettle once again. PSLV-C18 has put four satellites successfully into the orbit:

The 4 satellites were:

Indo-French satellite Megha-Tropiques for studying the water cycle and energy exchanges in the tropics.

SRMSat, a nanosatellite built by students of SRM University.

VesselSat-1, a microsatellite from Luxembourg.

Jugnu, a nanosatellite integrated by students of IIT-Kanpur.

The satellites used for: 

Megha-Tropiques, with four scientific instruments, will help in predicting the Indian monsoons, floods, cyclones and droughts, besides estimating the weather in the short-term and climate in the long-term in the tropical countries of the world. 

The 11-kg SRMSat will address the problem of global-warming and the pollution levels in the atmosphere by monitoring the carbon-dioxide present there. 

The 3-kg Jugnu is a remote-sensing satellite that will minor vegetation and water-bodies. 

VesselSat will help in locating ships cruising in the sea-lanes of the world.

NASA satellite is falling down

A 5.4-tonne dead satellite of NASA will soon fall to Earth but NASA saying there is very little chance that it will hit anyone.

The space agency does not know when or where its 20-year-old satellite will drop. It will probably hit the earth in late September but could fall in October. And it could land anywhere south of Juneau, Alaska, and north of the tip of South America. Nasa says there is only a one in 3,200 chance of satellite parts hitting someone.

Experts say not to worry. In the more than 50 years of the space age, no one has ever been hurt by falling space debris. The 5.4-tonne satellite was used to monitor the atmosphere. Most of it will burn up during re-entry. Only about 550kg of metal should survive.

Indian Space Shuttle

Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is going to launch its own reusable space shuttle very soon. 

Apparently, the shuttlecraft is currently being held in a secret location in Kerala.  An Indian version of the space shuttle will be test-flown from the spaceport at Sriharikota in a year’s time. The Reusable Launch Vehicle-Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD), as it is called, will be a combination rocket-aircraft: the aircraft with a winged body, which is the RLV, will sit vertically on the rocket.

Three women to supervise GSAT-12

Three ISRO women are diligently helping their 'baby' take its first steps in a sprawling antenna 'farm' amid village fields 200 km west of Bangalore, At its Master Control Facility (MCF) here, blinking screens show the status of GSAT-12, the latest communication satellite of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Supervising each move are three women, products of home campus, trained by Isro.

Project director T. K. Anuradha, mission director Pramodha Hegde and operations director Anuradha Prakasham, are the three women at the helm of affairs. After weeks of tests, the deployed antenna will link remote villages and hamlets to their resource centers, tele-medicine outlets and students who take lessons from far-away city campuses.

"The feeling is like delivering a baby," a beaming T. K. Anuradha, an electronics engineer from University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering, Bangalore, said. Last Friday from Sriharikota the PSLV-C17 launched the satellite onto a highly elliptical orbit stretching 284 km to 21,000 km from the earth.

The job of taking it to the intended orbit is supervised by Pramodha Hegde, an electronics engineer who studied at B. V. Bhoomaraddi College of Engineering and Technology in Hubli, Karnataka. "The toughest of the five orbit raising manoeuvres was the first. At the nearest point to earth, the satellite moves the fastest as per Kepler's Law, leaving a narrow window of time to fire the motors, optimising fuel use," she said.

Anuradha Prakasham ensures that the trio plays in tune keeping to the beat. "Different injection operations went precisely as planned," said Prakasha, a postgraduate in physics from Cochin University of Science and Technology.

PSLV-C17 Successfully Launches GSAT-12 Satellite

ISRO's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle proves its mettle again. PSLV-C17, in its 19th flight, successfully launches India's communication satellite GSAT-12 from the Second Launch Pad of Satish Dhawan Space Centre- SHAR, Sriharikota, India. PSLV-C17 measuring 44.5 m height, with a lift off weight of 320 tonnes has four stages of solid and liquid propulsion systems alternately. In its XL Version, PSLV-XL uses six extended solid strap-on motors wherein each strap-on carries 12 tonnes of solid propellant. This is a second time such a configuration is being flown, earlier one being the PSLV-C11/Chandrayaan-I mission.

Salient feature of PSLV-C17/GSAT-12 Mission:

·         For the first time, use of indigenously designed and developed On-Board computer (OBC) with Vikram 1601 processor in both primary and redundant chains of the vehicle. The OBC performs the functions of Navigation, Guidance and Control processing for the vehicle.

·         Use of extended solid strap-on configuration

·         Satellite injection in elliptical transfer orbit sub-Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO)

·         Five burn strategy (2 perigee burn and 3 apogee burn) for placing the GSAT-12 satellite from its sub-GTO to Geostationary Orbit