ISRO SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHES ROCKET

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) has pole-vaulted India into the commercial satellite launch business. On 26 May at 11:52 am the indigenously developed Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) blasted off into space successfully.

The PSLV-C2, as the launcher is called, carried a payload of three satellites - a Korean and a German microsatellite each, and a larger remote sensing satellite manufactured indigenously. This was the second operational flight of the vehicle. The first one took place on 29 September 1997 and placed a remote sensing satellite, the IRS-1D in a polar sun-synchronous orbit. The Korean satellite Kitsat-3 is an engineering test bird while the German satellite Tubsat is an earth observation satellite. Both were placed in orbit at 727 km above the earth's surface and Tubsat has already started sending signals.

The remote sensing satellite IRS-P4 at the time of writing had also been placed in orbit successfully and was working normally with its solar panels being deployed and instrumentation tested.

Isro has announced that it is working on augmenting the PSLV's lifting capacity from 1,200 kg to 1,500 kg. Seven more vehicles up to PSLV-C9 and three test launchers of the geo-synchronous satellite launch vehicle (GSLV) have been given the go-ahead by the government, enough activity to keep Isro busy for the next few years. Isro also has an agreement with Arianespace wherein the satellite launch company would direct micro satellite launch inquiries it gets towards Isro.