Third developmental flight of SSLV is 100% success: ISRO Chairman

The payload carried by the rocket has been designed and realised by the ISRO team, the chairman said.

Chennai: Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Friday completed the development of the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) as the rocket in its third developmental flight successfully injected an earth observation satellite and another into a precise orbit.

The SSLV-D3 rocket with EOS-08 and SR-0 Demosat took off at 9.17 am from the first launch of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota, 110 km from here. About 17 minutes later, EOS-08 was successfully injected into a 475-km circular orbit as planned.

“The third developmental flight of SSLV, the SSLV-D3 with the EOS-08 satellite has been accomplished. The rocket has placed the spacecraft in a very precise orbit as planned. I find that there are no deviations in the injection conditions,” said ISRO Chairman S Somanath.

“The final orbit, will of course, be known after tracking but the current indication is that everything is perfect,” Somanath added and declared as “complete” the development of the SSLV.

The ISRO will now transfer the technology to the industry for serial production and launch of SSLV, which can launch mini, micro or nanosatellites (10 to 500kg mass) into Low Earth Orbit of up to 500 km above Earth. This will give the much-needed boost to NewSpace India Ltd, the commercial arm of ISRO to take up commercial launches using such SSLVs.

Somanath added that Friday’s success was a great beginning for the SSLV and said the experimental satellite, ESO-08, was designed by the Isro to prove many new technologies. “The satellite’s solar panels have already been deployed and we are looking for certain activities. We will continue to track the developments,” the Isro chief added.

Isro is betting high on SSLVs as the government has already begun work on building the country’s second spaceport in Kulasekarapattinam in Thoothukudi district in Tamil Nadu to exclusively cater to small satellites.

The new site will help Isro save fuel as satellites launched from here can directly travel towards the South unlike those launched from Sriharikota which fly in the southeast direction after liftoff from the Sathish Dhawan Space Centre to avoid flying over Sri Lanka and take a sharp manoeuvre towards the South Pole.

The EOS-08 satellite carries a host of new technology developments in satellite mainframe systems like an Integrated Avionics System - Communication, Baseband, Storage and Positioning Package, Structural panel embedded with PCB, embedded battery, Micro-DGA (Dual Gimbal Antenna), M-PAA (Phased array antenna) and Flexible solar panel & Nano star sensor etc for onboard Technology Demonstration.

The primary objectives of the SSLV-D3-EOS-08 mission are designing and developing a microsatellite, creating payload instruments compatible with the microsatellite bus, and incorporating new technologies required for future operational satellites.

The satellite carries three payloads -- Electro Optical Infrared Payload (EOIR), SAC, Global Navigation Satellite System- Reflectometry payload (GNSS-R), SAC and SiC UV Dosimeter, and LEOS.

The first payload will take images in the Mid-Wave IR (MIR) band and in the Long Wave IR (LWIR) band during day and night for various applications like satellite-based surveillance, disaster monitoring, environmental monitoring, fire detection, volcanic activities and industrial and power plant disaster.

The second payload will demonstrate the capability using GNSS-R-based remote sensing to derive applications like ocean surface winds, soil moisture, cryosphere applications over the Himalayan Region, flood detection, and in-land waterbody detection, while the third payload will monitor the UV irradiance at the viewport of the crew module in Gaganyaan Mission.