At 2:53am on Tuesday, 28th January, Indian Space agency ISRO commenced the countdown to its 100th rocket launch mission from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. The GSLV Mk2 rocket carrying the indigenous GPS-like NVS-02 satellite is to liftoff at 6:23am on Wednesday, 29th January. The countdown is a well-planned technical process when health checks of various systems of the rocket and satellite are carried out, and the liquid-fuel stages of the rocket are tanked up.
In a launch mission that spans a little over 19minutes, the 50.9meters tall GSLV F-15 rocket will hurl the 2,250kg NVS-02 satellite into a Geosynchronous transfer orbit. In the weeks after launch, the satellite will use its on-board engines to reach its final orbit. NVS-02 is the second in the series of five Indian Next-generation Navigation satellites. ISRO is working towards launching three more satellites in the coming years.
NVS-02 and the GPS-like service it enables
Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC) is India’s independent regional navigation satellite system designed to provide accurate Position, Velocity and Timing (PVT) service to users in India and its vicinity. Simply put, it is a service similar to the American GPS or Russian GLONASS or Chinese Beidou. While the aforementioned foreign services are available globally, the Indian NAVIC is only available in the Indian mainland and 1500kms beyond. NVS-series satellites are meant to augment the existing NavIC services that a provided by an earlier generation of satellites.
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The earlier series of NavIC satellites had a shortcoming — they operated only in the L5-band and S-band frequencies. This was because India hadn't received the International Telecommunication Union authorisation for using the L1 and L2 frequency bands, which are widely used worldwide for navigation services. It was after the European constellation Galileo was granted permission to use the L1 band, that India also requested for the same and obtained it.
"L1 band is available on the NVS-series of satellites(and will be available on subsequent NVS satellites), it is an interoperable frequency and can be used across all chipsets(of mobile devices), provided they use our signal architecture," Dr Somanath had told WION, when he headed the agency.
Earlier, the Indian government and ISRO had been making efforts to make chipmakers and phone manufacturers adopt the L5 and S-band frequencies(which the original NavIC series used). However, this was met with various roadblocks as L5 and S were not civilian-use frequencies. Therefore, phone makers had to put in additional chipsets and hardware to make their devices NavIC-compatible, thus making their devices costlier. A mix of such technological and cost barriers meant that phone makers did not widely adopt NavIC and millions of Indian smartphone users couldn't benefit from it.
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With NavIC being operational on the L1 frequency band, and when all other satellites in the NVS fleet are service-ready, all mobile phones used in India can be made compatible with NavIC. This is possible without any additional investment and extra hardware from the manufacturer's end. Phone manufacturers will have to roll out some software updates alone, as all mobile chipsets are compatible with the L1 band that the NVS series of satellites will be using.
Six generation of rockets launched from Sriharikota
ISRO has launched six generations of spacefaring rockets from India's spaceport at Sriharikota, Satish Dhawan Space Centre. This includes the first Indian spacefaring rocket SLV-3(Satellite Launch Vehicle-3) and its successor, the Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle(ASLV). Thereafter came the PSLV, GSLV Mk and GSLV Mk3(now LVM3), and SSLV rocket.
The Indian Government has now approved almost $460mn for the construction of a third launchpad at Sriharikota. This is meant to execute the launches of India's Next-generation launch vehicle.