Indian Space Research Organisation added another feather to its cap with the succesful launching of PSLV-C18, which hurtle into space the 1000 kg Indo-French collaborative Megha-Tropiques Satellite for climate research into the outer space.
The launcher also carried three other Nano Satellites, lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota on Wednesday morning.
The PSLV would be placing the 1000kg Megha-Tropiques Satellite in a 867-km circular orbit with an inclination of 20 Degree to the equator and three other satellites one by one.
The Satellite would study climatic and atmospheric changes in tropical regions.The three nano satellites are the 10.4kg “SRMSAT”built by students of SRM University, the three kg remote sensing satellite “Jugnu” developed by the Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur.
The 28 kg “VesselSat” from Luxembourg to locate ships on high seas will also be put into orbit.The Automatic Identification System for ships receivers will detect signals automatically trasmitted by Vessels at sea in the region covered by the satellite footprint.
With Wednesday’s succesful launch it is ISRO’s 20th PSLV mission.In its previous 19 missions, the four-stage PSLV Vehicle had 18 successive successful flights till July this year.
PSLV has proved its multi-payload, multi-mission capability in a single launch.The same PSLV with extended version of strap-on motors was used for the prestigious Chandrayaan-mission.