ISRO gets into elevated space

Sriharikota, (AP): ISRO's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle on Saturday successfully placed two Singapore satellites into the intended orbit, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said. The satellites are part of the order secured by NewSpace India Ltd, the commercial arm of ISRO. At the end of a 22.5-hour countdown, the 44.4-metre tall rocket lifted off majestically from the first launch pad at the pre-fixed 2.19 pm at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre here, located about 135 km from Chennai.

ISRO Chief S Somanath said PSLV placed both satellites into the intended orbit. "The PSLV in its 57th mission has once again demonstrated its high reliability and its suitability for commercial missions of such class," a beaming Somanath said from the Mission Control Center.

"In this mission, we had a core alone configuration of the PSLV which has many specialities and improvements that we made to bring down the cost of the rocket as well as its integration time. And this is the goal--to have increased production and launches of PSLV in the times to come...," Somanath, also Secretary, Department of Space, said. Mission Director S R Biju said the "totally dedicated commercial mission" was carried out with "utmost precision." The primary satellite TeLEOS-2 is a synthetic aperture radar satellite developed under partnership between Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) representing the Government of Singapore and ST Engineering.

It would be used to support the satellite image requirements of various agencies within the Government of Singapore. TeLEOS-2 carries a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) payload. It would be used to provide all-weather day and night coverage and is capable of imaging at one metre full polarimetric resolution for Singapore.

The co-passenger satellite is Lumelite-4, co-developed by the Institute for Infocomm Research and Satellite TEchnology and Research Centre of the National University of Singapore. It is an advanced 12U satellite developed for the technological demonstration of the High-Performance Space-borne VHF data Exchange System (VDES).

The objective of the satellite is to augment Singapore's e-navigation maritime safety and benefit the global shipping community, ISRO said. PSLV C55 mission has been adopted with the 'integrate, transfer and launch' concept using the PSLV integration facility at Sriharikota. It is also the 16th mission for ISRO using the PSLV Core Alone configuration. Saturday's mission follows the successful deployment of the TeLEOS-1 satellite in a PSLV-C29 rocket along with five other satellites of Singapore in December 2015.