ISRO's PSLV to launch 7 Singaporean satellites on Sunday, countdown begins

After a gap of almost five years, the Indian space agency Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will be performing two rocket launches in the same month.

After launching the third lunar mission Chandrayaan-3 on July 14, the ISRO is geared up for a commercial mission by the PSLV rocket on Sunday (July 30).

The 25-hours 30 minutes countdown for the launch commenced at 5:01 am on Saturday and the vehicle is expected to lift off from the first launchpad of Satish Dhawan Space Centre at 6:31 am on Sunday. The last time that ISRO performed two launches in a month was in November 2018, when ISRO performed launch missions of its LVM3 and PLSV rocket, in quick succession.

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The primary passenger of the PSLV C56 rocket will be the 360kg DS-SAR Satellite and it will be placed in a Near-equatorial Orbit (NEO) at 5 degrees inclination and 535 km altitude. The DS-SAR satellite is developed under a partnership between DSTA (representing the Government of Singapore) and ST Engineering.

Once deployed and operational, it will be used to support the satellite imagery requirements of various agencies within the Government of Singapore. ST Engineering will use it for multi-modal and higher responsiveness imagery and geospatial services for their commercial customers.

DS-SAR carries a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) payload developed by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). This allows the DS-SAR to provide for all-weather day and night coverage and is capable of imaging at 1m resolution at full polarimetry.

The co-passenger satellites are VELOX-AM -a 23 kg technology demonstration microsatellite, ARCADE- Atmospheric Coupling and Dynamics Explorer (ARCADE), an experimental satellite, SCOOB-II - a 3U nanosatellite flying a technology demonstrator payload, NuLIoN by NuSpace- an advanced 3U nanosatellite enabling seamless IoT connectivity in both urban & remote locations, Galassia-2- a 3U nanosatellite that will be orbiting at low earth orbit and ORB-12 STRIDER - the satellite is developed under an International collaboration.

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Put together, all seven satellites weigh close to 425kg and therefore the PSLV rocket will be flown in its Core-alone configuration. Depending on the payload to be lifted, the PSLV rocket is configured in the core-alone version(for less-heavy payloads) and with strap-on boosters for added lifting power and heavy payloads.

If successful, this mission would mark the launch of 431 foreign-origin satellites by the Indian space agency, since the year 1999. Given that Sunday's mission is a commercial mission, ISRO will be performing the launch for its commercial arm known as New Space India Limited (NSIL).

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