Isro creates history, launches 104 satellites in one go

PSLV-C37 carrying the 104 satellites lifted off from the first launch pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota at 9.28am. It was PSLV's 39th flight+. Seventeen minutes later, the rocket started placing the satellites into orbit, one by one with a time-frame of about 11 minutes. Out of the total 104 satellites placed in orbit, 101 satellites belonged to six foreign countries. They included 96 from the US and one each from Israel, the UAE, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Kazakhstan.

PSLV first injected its main payload Cartosat- 2 series, India's indigenously built earth observation satellite. It was followed by two other nanosatellites of Isro ---- INS-1A and INS-1B. It then took less than 10 minutes for the rocket to spew out 101 passengers, which are all foreign nanosatellites, as it travelled up in altitude reaching the polar sun synchronous orbit. Russian Space Agency held a record of launching 37 satellites in one go during its mission in June 2014. India previously launched 23 satellites in a single mission in June 2015.

Isro chairman A S Kiran Kumar congratulated his team for the successful launch of 104 satellites. "My hearty congratulations to the team. The Prime Minister has conveyed his congratulations," he said.

"We can hit centuries like cricketers'

Director, Isro Satellite Centre Mayilsamy Annadurai said, "We can also hit centuries like our cricketers. In another two months, the number of satellites built by Isro will reach 100. Besides GSLV missions, we have get Chandrayan - 2 ready for launch next year." Mission director B Jayakumar said the launch involved complex issues in management and maneuvering, "A great moment for each and every one of us. We have so far launched 226 satellites including 179 foreign satellites," he said.

Director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre K Sivan said it was the toughest mission they had handled. "We had to ensure they don't collide," he said. "Last year we saw nine successful launches. This year began with a remarkable event. Congratulations to customers on placing confidence on Isro's PSLV," said director of Satish Dhawan Space Centre P Kunhikrishnan.

All about 104 s atellites

Equipped with panchromatic and multispectral cameras, the 664kg Cartosat -2 will provide remote sensing services similar to that of its predecessors. Images from the satellite will be used for cartographic applications, urban and rural applications, coastal land use and regulation, utility management like road network monitoring, water distribution, creation of land use maps, change detection to bring out geographical and manmade features and various other land information system (LIS) and geographical information system (GSI) applications.

INS-1A and INS-1B are versatile and modular nanosatellite bus system envisioned for future science and experimental payload. Among the foreign satellites, 88 cube satellites belonged to San Francisco-based earth imaging startup Planet. With the launch, the company has increased its fleet to 143 satellites which will soon begin capturing images of the earth's entire landmass, including India, every day. Eight other satellites belonging to Spire Global, US, will provide services for vessel tracking and weather measurement. The nano satellites from Israel, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the UAE are mostly technology demonstrators.

Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh:  In its longest and most complex mission, India's space agency ISRO today launched eight satellites from one rocket into two different orbits. Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted, "Our space scientists keep scripting history."

The PSLV or 37th Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, carrying three satellites from India, three from Algeria, and one each from Canada and the US, lifted off from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh at 9:12 am. Around noon, ISRO said its launch was "100 per cent successful".

Most countries launch satellites in a single orbit and even if multiple satellites are injected, it is in a sequence in the same orbit.

What makes this mission a challenge is that the PSLV will launch its payloads in two different orbits. The twin-orbit manoeuvre was recently accomplished by European Space Agency's Vega rocket.

"This is a challenging two-in-one mission which puts India in a unique league of nations having the capability to achieve two different orbits in a single mission," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman AS Kiran Kumar earlier told.

India's SCATSAT, meant for ocean and weather forecasts, cyclone detection and tracking, has been placed in orbit. India shares such data with the US, which helped them track Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

Pratham, a 10-kg satellite developed by students of the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, will study the total electron count in space. The 5.25-kg PISAT made by students of Bengaluru's PES University will take pictures of earth.

The mission will also test PSLV's multiple burn capability which will be utilized in the last leg and will set a new milestone for ISRO. The whole procedure was completed within 2 hours and 15 minutes - the longest mission for ISRO.

The stop-start of the rocket - while travelling at a speed of more than 2660 kmph - gives PSLV an edge in the multi-billion dollar commercial launch market. "It will open up new vistas to commercialise ISRO's launch capabilities for two-orbit configurations," said Dr K Sivan, Director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Center.

In another first later this year, India hopes to launch its heaviest rocket, the Geo-Synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III, capable of taking up to 4 tonnes of communications satellite.

The three Algerian satellites are for earth observation, remote sensing and technology demonstration. The US' Pathfinder-1 is a commercial high resolution imaging micro satellite while Canada's NLS-19 is a technology demonstration nano satellite for experimentation in helping to reduce space debris and for tracking commercial aircraft.

GSLV Successfully Launches India's Weather Satellite INSAT-3DR

In its tenth flight (GSLV-F05) conducted September 08, 2016, India's Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle, equipped with the indigenous Cryogenic Upper Stage (CUS), successfully launched the country's weather satellite INSAT-3DR, into a Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO).

The achieved orbit is very close to the intended one. The launch took place from the Second Launch Pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR (SDSC SHAR), Sriharikota, the spaceport of India. This was the first operational flight of GSLV equipped with CUS and the fourth to carry the indigenous CUS. This latest GSLV flight was the third consecutive success achieved by GSLV carrying indigenous CUS and the 2211 kg INSAT-3DR is the heaviest satellite to be launched from the Indian soil.

In its oval shaped GTO, the INSAT-3DR satellite is now orbiting the Earth with a perigee (nearest point to Earth) of 169.76 km and an apogee (farthest point to Earth) of 36,080.5 km with an orbital inclination of 20.62 deg with respect to the equator.

After a 29 hour 40 minutes countdown, the 415 tonne, 49 m tall GSLV-F05 carrying INSAT-3DR, lifted off at the rescheduled time of 16:50 Hrs IST. The 40 minute delay in the launch was due to an anomaly observed in the functioning of a pressure release valve in the liquid Oxygen filling ground segment which was resolved later.

At 4.8 seconds before the countdown reached zero, the four liquid propellant strap-on stages of GSLV-F05, each carrying 42 tonne of liquid propellants, were ignited. At count zero and after confirming the normal performance of all the four strap-on motors, the 139 tonne solid propellant first stage core motor was ignited and GSLV lifted off.

The major phases of the flight included the core motor burn-out, strap on burn-out, ignition of the second stage, separation of the core motor together with strap-ons, payload fairing separation, second stage separation, CUS ignition and its timely shut down after satisfactory performance. About seventeen minutes after lift-off, INSAT-3DR was successfully placed in GTO.

Soon after its injection into GTO, the solar array of INSAT-3DR was automatically deployed and the Master Control Facility (MCF) at Hassan in Karnataka took control of the satellite.

Like its predecessor INSAT-3D which is providing service from orbit since 2013, INSAT-3DR is an advanced meteorological (weather observation) satellite built by India to provide a variety inputs essential for accurate weather forecasting. For this, it is equipped with three payloads (instruments), namely, a Multispectral Imager, Sounder and weather Data Relay Transponder.

INSAT-3DR also carries a satellite aided Search and Rescue Transponder that picks up and relays alert signals originating from distress beacons of maritime, aviation and land based users.
In the coming days, INSAT-3DR's orbit will be raised from its present GTO to the final circular Geostationary Orbit (GSO) by firing the satellite's Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) in stages.

The satellite will be commissioned into service after the completion of orbit raising operations and the satellite's positioning in its designated orbital slot of 74 degree East longitude in the GSO and in-orbit testing of its payloads.

This latest flight of GSLV further highlights the success of ISRO in mastering the highly complex cryogenic rocket propulsion technology.

India tests new scramjet rocket engine

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has successfully tested its new scramjet engine and expects a commercial launch. This is being touted as the most cost-effective rocket engine the world has seen.

With this, the ISRO, which is already the most inexpensive commercial satellite launch service provider in the world, expects to attract more customers worldwide.
The test carried out from Satish Dhawan Space Center, located at Sriharikota in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, demonstrated the key technological aspects of the engine.

These included the ignition of its engines at supersonic speeds, maintaining thrust at supersonic speeds, and tests of its air intake mechanism and fuel injection systems.
"The first experimental mission of ISRO's Scramjet Engine towards the realization of an Air Breathing Propulsion System was conducted August 28, 2016 from Satish Dhawan Space Center SHAR, Sriharikota.

After a flight of about 300 seconds, the vehicle touched down in the Bay of Bengal, approximately 320 km from Sriharikota. The vehicle was successfully tracked during its flight from the ground stations at Sriharikota," reads a statement released by ISRO.

The Scramjet engine designed by ISRO uses Hydrogen as a fuel and the Oxygen from the atmospheric air as its oxidizer. The use of atmospheric oxygen will reduce the weight of the rocket engine substantially, which can then be used to launch heavy payloads.

Rocky planet found orbiting habitable zone of nearest star

An international team of astronomers including Carnegie's Paul Butler has found clear evidence of a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our Solar System. The new world, designated Proxima b, orbits its cool red parent star every 11 days and has a temperature suitable for liquid water to exist on its surface, if it were present.

This rocky world is a little more massive than the Earth and is the closest exoplanet to us; it may even be the closest possible abode for life beyond our own Sun. A paper describing this milestone finding is published by Nature.

Just over four light-years from our Solar System sits a red dwarf star named Proxima Centauri. This cool star in the constellation of Centaurus is too faint to be seen with the naked eye and is close to the much brighter pair of stars known as Alpha Centauri A and B.

During the first half of 2016, the HARPS spectrograph on the European Southern Observatory's 3.6-meter telescope at La Silla regularly observed Proxima Centauri, as did other professional and amateur telescopes around the world.

The team of astronomers, called the Pale Red Dot campaign, led by Carnegie alum Guillem Anglada-Escude of Queen Mary, University of London was looking for a tiny back-and-forth wobble in the star caused by the gravitational pull of an orbiting planet.

In addition to data gathered by the Pale Red Dot campaign, the paper incorporates contributions from scientists who have been observing Proxima Centauri for years, including Butler.

As this was a topic with very wide public interest, the progress of the campaign between mid-January and April 2016 was shared publicly as it occurred on the Pale Red Dot website and via social media. Numerous outreach articles from specialists all around the world accompanied the reports on data collection.

Anglada-Escude explains the background to this unique search: "The first hints of a possible planet were spotted back in 2013, but the detection was not convincing. Since then we have worked hard to get further observations off the ground with help from ESO and others. The recent Pale Red Dot campaign has been about two years in the planning."

The Pale Red Dot data, when combined with earlier observations, revealed a truly exciting result. At regular intervals, Proxima Centauri is approaching Earth at about 5 kilometers per hour - normal human walking pace - and at opposite times in those cycles it is receding at the same speed.

This regular pattern repeats with a period of 11.2 days. Careful analysis of how tiny the resulting Doppler shifts were showed that they indicated the presence of a planet with a mass at least 1.3 times that of the Earth, orbiting about 7 million kilometers from Proxima Centauri - only 5 percent of the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

One complication to the analysis is that red dwarfs like Proxima Centauri are active stars, and their natural brightness variations could mimic the presence of a planet. In order to exclude this possibility, the team also monitored the changing brightness of the star very carefully during the campaign using the ASH2 telescope at the San Pedro de Atacama Celestial Explorations Observatory in Chile and the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network.

Although the planet companion, Proxima b, orbits much closer to its star than Mercury does to the Sun in our Solar System, the star itself is far fainter and cooler than the Sun. As a result, Proxima b has an estimated temperature that - if water were present - would allow it in a liquid state on its surface, thus placing it within the so-called "habitable zone" around the star.

Despite the temperate orbit of Proxima b, the conditions on the surface may be strongly affected by the ultraviolet and x-ray flares from the star - far more intense than the Earth experiences from the Sun.

"The discovery of the potentially habitable planet around Proxima Cen is the culmination of 30 years of work that has improved stellar velocity measurement precision from 300 m/s to 1 m/s," Butler said.

"This work has resulted in the discovery of hundreds of planets around the nearest stars, and now a potentially habitable planet around the nearest star in the sky. This work confirms the Kepler satellite and precision velocity studies that have shown that potentially habitable planets are common, and points the way to the future when such planets will be directly observed with giant ground- and space-based telescopes."

World's Largest Telescope Unlikely to Find Home in India

The telescope is part of an ambitious international project to discover more about our universe.
One of the potential alternate sites for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), proposed for the Indian town of Hanle, has less advantageous characteristics than other places Indian Minister of State for Science and Technology Y. S. Chowdary said before parliament.
"Hanle site has lower seeing values of 0.9-1.2 arc sec as compared to the alternate sites in Chile and Canary Islands of Spain (La Palma) which have seeing values of 0.55 arc sec.
Thus, scientifically, Hanle has less advantageous characteristics for hosting a mega telescope like the TMT in comparison to the other alternate sites."
Indian participation in the TMT project is being jointly funded and overseen by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE). TMT was originally set to be installed at Mauna Kea in Hawaii, the US.
The construction work for TMT at Mauna Kea was started but had to be stalled due to revocation of a permit by orders of the Supreme Court of Hawaii.

India launches 20 satellites in single mission

India successfully launched a rocket carrying 20 satellites on Wednesday, setting a new national record as its famously frugal space agency looks to grab a larger slice of the lucrative commercial space market.

The rocket blasted off from the southern spaceport of Sriharikota carrying satellites from the US, Germany, Canada and Indonesia, the most in a single Indian mission.

Most of the satellites are intended to observe and measure the Earth's atmosphere, while another aims to provide services for amateur radio operators.

"Each of these small objects that you are putting into space will carry out their own activity, which is independent of the other, and each of them will live a wonderful life for a finite period," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman A.S Kiran Kumar told the NDTV news network.

The business of putting commercial satellites into space for a fee is growing as phone, Internet and other companies as well as countries seek greater and more high-tech communications.
India is competing with other international players for a greater share of that launch market, and is known for its low-cost space programme.

Among the 20 satellites launched on Wednesday were 13 from the US including one from a Google-owned company and two from Indian universities.

- 'Market potential' -

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the launch was a "monumental accomplishment", although it trails Russia's 33 record launched in 2014 and NASA's haul of 29 the year before.

"Our space programme has time and again shown the transformative potential of science & technology in people's lives," Modi tweeted.

Expert Ajay Lele said the latest test was a "quantum jump" for India which has "made its presence felt even more now by displaying its promising market potential".

"India is attracting key foreign players, most importantly the US, in the space market thanks to its cost-effectiveness and credibility," said Lele, a senior fellow at the New Delhi-based Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses.

Lele said he expected ISRO to form a public-private partnership to outsource its growing commercial activity in another three to four years.

Last month India successfully launched its first mini space shuttle as it joined the global race to make reusable rockets.

In 2013 India sent an unmanned rocket to orbit Mars at a cost of just $73 million compared with NASA's Maven Mars mission which had a $671 million price tag.

The successful mission was a source of immense pride in India, which beat rival China in becoming the first Asian country to reach the Red Planet.

Modi has often hailed India's budget space technology, quipping in 2014 that a rocket that launched four foreign satellites into orbit had cost less to make than Hollywood film "Gravity".

India's mini space shuttle blasts off

India successfully launched its first model space shuttle on Monday, a top official said, as New Delhi joined the race to develop a reusable rocket to make space travel easier and cheaper.

The winged shuttle blasted off on a rocket from the southeastern spaceport of Sriharikota at about 7:00am (0130 GMT), with television footage showing it streaming through a clear sky.

The shuttle, about one sixth the size of a normal one, was meant to reach an altitude of 70 kilometres (43 miles) before gliding back down and splashing into the Bay of Bengal 10 minutes later.
"The lift-off was at 7am from the first launch pad here," India's space chief Devi Prasad Karnik told AFP.

"We have successfully accomplished the RLV mission as a technology demonstrator," he said.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), known for its low costs, has developed the winged shuttle called the Reusable Launch Vehicle or RLV-TD reportedly on a miniscule budget of one billion rupees ($14 million).

Monday's test mission was a crucial step towards eventually developing a full-scale, reusable shuttle to send up satellites in the future.

India faces stiff competition including from global companies which are developing their own reusable rockets after NASA retired its space shuttle programme in 2011.

Reusable rockets would cut costs and waste in the space industry, which currently loses millions of dollars in jettisoned machinery after each launch.

Billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX and Amazon owner Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin have already successfully undertaken their own test launches.

But ISRO hopes to develop its own frugal shuttle, as it seeks to cash in on a huge and lucrative demand from other countries to send up their satellites.

ISRO made global headlines in 2013 after it successfully launched an unmanned mission to orbit Mars, spending just $73 million. NASA had spent $671 million on its Maven Mars mission.

Pluto's Big Moon Charon Reveals a Colorful and Violent History

NASA's New Horizons captured this high-resolution enhanced color view of Charon just before closest approach on July 14, 2015. The image combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the spacecraft's Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC); the colors are processed to best highlight the variation of surface properties across Charon. Charon's color palette is not as diverse as Pluto's; most striking is the reddish north (top) polar region, informally named Mordor Macula. Charon is 754 miles (1,214 kilometers) across; this image resolves details as small as 1.8 miles (2.9 kilometers).

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has returned the best color and the highest resolution images yet of Pluto's largest moon, Charon - and these pictures show a surprisingly complex and violent history.

At half the diameter of Pluto, Charon is the largest satellite relative to its planet in the solar system. Many New Horizons scientists expected Charon to be a monotonous, crater-battered world; instead, they're finding a landscape covered with mountains, canyons, landslides, surface-color variations and more.

"We thought the probability of seeing such interesting features on this satellite of a world at the far edge of our solar system was low," said Ross Beyer, an affiliate of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging (GGI) team from the SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, "but I couldn't be more delighted with what we see!"

High-resolution images of the Pluto-facing hemisphere of Charon, taken by New Horizons as the spacecraft sped through the Pluto system on July 14, and transmitted to Earth on Sept. 21, reveal details of a belt of fractures and canyons just north of the moon's equator. This great canyon system stretches across the entire face of Charon, more than a thousand miles, and probably around onto Charon's far side. Four times as long as the Grand Canyon, and twice as deep in places, these faults and canyons indicate a titanic geological upheaval in Charon's past.

"It looks like the entire crust of Charon has been split open," said John Spencer, deputy lead for GGI at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "In respect to its size relative to Charon, this feature is much like the vast Valles Marineris canyon system on Mars."

The team has also discovered that the plains south of the canyon, informally referred to as Vulcan Planum, have fewer large craters than the regions to the north, indicating that they are noticeably younger. The smoothness of the plains, as well as their grooves and faint ridges, are clear signs of wide-scale resurfacing.

One possibility for the smooth surface is a kind of cold volcanic activity, called cryovolcanism. "The team is discussing the possibility that an internal water ocean could have frozen long ago, and the resulting volume change could have led to Charon cracking open, allowing water-based lavas to reach the surface at that time," said Paul Schenk, a New Horizons team member from the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.

Even higher-resolution Charon images and composition data are still to come as New Horizons transmits data, stored on its digital recorders, over the next year - and as that happens, "I predict Charon's story will become even more amazing!" said mission Project Scientist Hal Weaver, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

The New Horizons spacecraft is currently 3.1 billion miles (5 billion kilometers) from Earth, with all systems healthy and operating normally.

New Horizons is part of NASA's New Frontiers Program, managed by the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. APL designed, built, and operates the New Horizons spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. SwRI leads the science mission, payload operations, and encounter science planning.

Isro successfully launches Astrosat, six other satellites

SRIHARIKOTA: Isro on Monday successfully launched India's first astronomy satellite Astrosat, eleven years after the government cleared the project. A Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C30) carrying Astrosat and six other satellites lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota at 10am. In around 25 minutes after liftoff, PSLV-C30 injected Astrosat and other satellites -- four US nano satellites, a microsatellite from Indonesia a nanosatellite from Canada - into their respective orbits. This is the first time India is launching a US satellite.

Astrosat was placed in an orbit 644.651km from earth, as desired. The satellite achieved an expected inclination of 6.002 degree. "The mission is successful. It is a well-professed and synchronous efforts." Satish Dhawan Space Centre director P Kunhikrishnan said after the launch. "It's a hard earned gift," he added.

ASTROSAT

Astrosat, which had a lift-off mass of 1,513kg, will now embark on a five-year astronomy mission studying distant celestial objects. It will observe the universe in the optical, ultraviolet, low and high energy x-ray regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, compared to most other scientific satellites that are capable of observing a narrow range of wavelength band.

Among its assignments, the five payloads of Astrosat will study star birth regions and black holes. ISRO's website lists out the objective of the observatory: to understand high energy processes in binary star systems containing neutron stars and black holes, estimate magnetic fields of neutron stars, study star birth regions and high energy processes in star systems lying beyond our galaxy, detect new briefly bright x-ray sources in the sky and perform limited deep field survey of the universe in the ultraviolet region.

Carrying five payloads, Astrosat is capable of observing the sky in the visible, near ultraviolet (UV) and far UV regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The two telescopes on the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) payload are designed to achieve an excellent image resolution, while the other four payloads have their specific roles.

The other payloads are Large X-Ray Proportional Counter (LAXPC), Soft x-ray Telescope (SXT), Cadmium Zinc Telluride Imager (CZTI) and Charge Particle Monitor (CPM). The payloads will start working on next Monday, on the eighth day after launch.

FOREIGN PASSENGERS

The four LEMUR nanosatellites from Spire Global Inc, San Francisco (US), are non-visual remote sensing satellites focusing primarily on global maritime intelligence through vessel tracking via the Automatic Identification System (AIS), and high fidelity weather forecasting using GPS Radio Occultation technology.

Besides these, the PSLV-C30 also launched LAPAN-A2, a microsatellite from the National Institute of Aeronautics and Space-LAPAN, Indonesia, meant for providing maritime surveillance using Automatic Identification System (AIS), supporting Indonesian radio amateur communities for disaster mitigation and carrying out Earth surveillance using video and digital camera.

And the last foreign passenger is the NLS-14 (Ev9), a nanosatellite from Space Flight Laboratory, University of Toronto Institute for Advanced Studies (SFL, UTIAS), Canada. It is a maritime monitoring Nanosatellite using the next generation Automatic Identification System (AIS).