India Launches ASTROSAT,6 Foreign Crafts, Including 4 From U.S.

With a lift-off mass of about 1,513 kg, ASTROSAT was first injected into a 650 km orbit by PSLV-C30, followed by the other six satellites in the space of about three minutes.

International customer satellites that piggybacked the polr rocket were the LAPAN-A2 of Indonesia meant for maritime surveillance using Automatic Identification System (AIS), and maritime monitoring nanosatellite from Canada, NLS-14 (Ev9), which uses ‘next generation’ AIS.

The rocket, one of world’s most reliable launch vehicles which clocked its 30th successful mission in a row today, also carried four identical LEMUR nano satellites of a Spire Global Inc., San Fransisco, U.S., that were non-visual remote sensing satellites ‘focusing primarily on maritime intelligence through vessel tracking via’ the AIS, ISRO said.

With this, a total of 51 satellites belonging to global customers from 20 countries, including Germany, France, Japan, Canada, U.K, have been launched successfully by ISRO so far.

Post the successful injection of ASTROSAT into the orbit, ASTROSAT Project Director K S Sarma said it was “healthy and doing well”. It has a mission life of five years.

“This satellite is very unique as we have sophisticated and sensitive astronomical equipment”, he added.

ASTROSAT will observe the universe in optical,ultraviolet low and high energy X-ray regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, while most other scientific satellites are capable of observing a narrow range of wavelength band. It will send back data and study parts of the universe including black holes and the magnetic fields of stars.