Monday, February 25, 2013

ISRO successfully sends Indo-French SARAL, six other satellites into orbit

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has successfully sent the Indo-French oceanographic study satellite, SARAL, into space from its spaceport at Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh on Monday evening. Along with the SARAL satellite, ISRO’s PSLV rocket also launched six foreign mini and micro spacecrafts which includes Austria’s UniBRITE and BRITE; Canada’s NEOSSat and SAPPHIRE; Denmark’s AAUSAT3; and the United Kingdom’s STRaND.

A 410-kg satellite with two payloads, Argos and Altika, SARAL comes from the space agency CNES. The Indo-French satellite will be performing an oceanogprahic studies with the goal of improving the understanding of ocean state conditions. The Argos payload is a satellite-based data collection platform, while the Altika payload will aid in studying the height of sea surface,

This was the 23rd mission of the PSLV, which has an impeccable record of 21 consecutive successful flights. The recent launch is also the ninth time ISRO used the “core alone” variant of the rocket. ISRO has originally planned to perform the launch last December 12, 2012, but was delayed to carry out additional tests that to “address technical issues to ensure reliability.”

You may also want to read: 

No comments:

Post a Comment