Isro launches navigation centre near Bangalore

India will launch the first satellite of the Indian Regional Navigational Satellite System (IRNSS) constellation – IRNSS-1A – in the early hours of June 12, K Radhakrishnan, Chairman, Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), said on Tuesday.

He said at the inauguration of Isro navigation centre at the Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) campus at Byalalu near here, that the IRNSS, which is an independent navigation satellite system being developed by India, would be launched on the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) platform using the PSLV-C22 XL from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.

The IRNSS consists  of a constellation of seven satellites which enables its users to determine their location and time accurately. The first full constellation was planned to be realised during the 2014 time frame. The IRNSS was designed to provide position accuracy of better than 10 metres over India and the region extending about 1,500-km around the country, besides providing real time Position, Navigation and Time (PNT) services to users on a variety of platforms with 24x7 service availability under all-weather conditions.

Radhakrishnan said “IRNSS provides two basic services – standard positioning service for common civilian users and restricted service for special authorised users.” It would help terrestrial, aerial and marine navigation services along with disaster and fleet management. The satellites would be positioned in suitable geostationary and inclined geosynchronous orbits to provide regional coverage over Indian and its neighbourhood and would be equipped with high-precision atomic clocks and continuously transmit navigation signals to users.

The Isro navigation centre, which was inaugurated by V Narayanasamy, Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office, will be responsible for the time reference, generation of navigation messages and monitoring and control of ground facilities including ranging stations. It will host several key technical facilities, for supporting these navigation functions. Officials said that the key to navigation support was the time reference to which all ground based systems and the satellite clocks were synchronised. . “ This timing facility is equipped with high stability, high precision atomic clocks to provide stable and continuous time reference to the navigation system,” one of them said.