A Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle of ISRO on Saturday successfully injected the earth observation satellite (Oceansat) into a sun-synchronous orbit, Indian Space Research Organisation said on Saturday, November 26. The 44.4 metre tall rocket lifted off at a prefixed time at 11.56 am from Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota spaceport at the end of a 25.30-hour countdown.
After reaching the intended orbit 17 minutes after PSLV-C54 lifted off, the Earth Observation Satellite or the Oceansat successfully separated from the rocket and was placed into orbit, ISRO chairman S Somanath said. Scientists would perform lowering of the rocket to place the other co-passenger satellites into a different orbit which is expected to take place in a two-hour duration.
The Earth Observation Satellite-6 is the third-generation satellite in the Oceansat series. This is to provide continuity services of Oceansat-2 spacecraft with enhanced payload specifications as well as application areas. The objective of the mission is to ensure data continuity of ocean colour and wind vector data to sustain the operational applications. The mission is one of the longest ones undertaken by the ISRO scientists who would engage the rocket to change orbits using two-orbit change thrusters (OCTs) used in the PSLV-C54 launch vehicle.
The customer payloads include ISRO Nano Satellite-2 for Bhutan (INS-2B) which would have two payloads namely NanoMx and APRS-Digipeater. NanoMx is a multispectral optical imaging payload developed by Space Applications Centre while APRS-Digipeater payload is jointly developed by Department of Information Technology and Telecom, Bhutan, and U R Rao Satellite Centre, Bengaluru.
The 'Anand' satellite developed by Pixxel is technology demonstrator to demonstrate the capabilities and commercial applications of miniature earth observation camera for observation using a micro-satellite in low earth orbit.
The 'Thybolt' (two satellites) is from another space start-up, Dhruva Space, while Astrocast is a technology demonstrator satellite for the internet of things as the payload from Spaceflight, the United States of America.