India puts 2 British satellites into orbit in first night mission

Successfully executing its first space mission at night, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched two British satellites from a centre in Sriharikota in southern state of Andhra Pradesh yesterday.

The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle C42 lifted off from the ISRO's first launch pad at 10:08pm (Indian time) and both the satellites were injected into the Sun Synchronous Orbit, about 17 minutes later, at an altitude of 583 kilometes, the Indian space agency said in a statement.

"This was a unique night mission executed for the first time by us," our New Delhi correspondent reports quoting ISRO Chairman K Sivan.

With this, ISRO, which has earned a world-wide reputation for low-cost space projects, has launched 239 foreign satellites of 28 countries.

The satellites belong to UK-based Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL), which has a contract with Antrix Corporation Ltd, the commercial arm of ISRO.

While one British satellite NovaSAR has applications including in forestry mapping, land use and ice-cover monitoring, flood and disaster monitoring and maritime missions, the other one S1-4 is a high resolution earth observation satellite meant for surveying resources, environment monitoring, urban management and disaster monitoring.

This was the 44th flight of ISRO's PSLV and the 12th flight of the Core Alone version of the vehicle used for launching smaller payloads.

The PSLV launch vehicle consists of four stages, each of which is a self-contained vehicle capable of functioning independently with own propulsion systems, ISRO said.

During the previous launch (PSLV-C41 on April 12, 2018, the 'XL' version of PSLV with six strap-on motors was used. The vehicle successfully launched India's navigation satellite to a Sub-Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit

"The PSLV-C42 marks the latest technology and commercial collaboration between India and the UK with the launch of the combination of high resolution optical and radar (SAR) satellites from us," said Martin Sweeting, Group Executive Chairman of SSTL.

"This success will give added energy for industries to make PSLV by themselves. We are going to have 18 missions in the next six months, virtually one launch every two weeks," Sivan said.