Next PSLV launch to carry 3 satellites made by Indian start-ups

This comes just six months after the government announced the opening up of the space sector to private players with the inception of Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe).

After the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C50) successfully placed the communications satellite CMS-01 in orbit on Thursday, ISRO chairperson K Sivan announced that the next mission of the dependable rocket would carry satellites developed by Indian space start-ups and companies.

This comes just six months after the government announced the opening up of the space sector to private players with the inception of Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe).

“The next PSLV mission is special for the entire country. Recently, we have brought the space reform and unlocked India’s potential in the space sector initiated by the government of India. Now, the first satellite by a start-up called Pixxel India called Anand which is an Earth Observation Satellite will be launched on PSLV-C51. Along with Anand, two more satellites under the space reform are going to be launched – one by Space Kidz India and another by a university consortium called UnitySat,” said Sivan after the launch of CMS 01.

The satellite by Pixxel India is the first in a series of constellation of Earth Observation Satellites that will provide global coverage every 24-hour; enabling organisations to detect and monitor global phenomenon in near real-time. The data will be available on an Artificial Intelligence-based platform, making the extraction of the data easy. It will have uses in agriculture, forestry, urban monitoring, and climate.

As for Space Kidz India, this will be their second satellite to be launched by ISRO. Their first KalamSat was the first student-made satellite to be launched by ISRO using the fourth stage of the PSLV as the platform for the first time.

Apart from the PSLV-C51 mission, the Indian Space Research Organisation is also gearing up for the maiden flight of the small satellite launch vehicle. The SSLV will have the capacity to launch a light 500-kilogram satellite in the lower Earth orbit.

The new rocket will cost about Rs 30 crore, compared to the Rs1 20 crore it costs to manufacture the currently used PSLV. It can also be assembled by a team of six within seven days, in comparison to a team of 600 people and a few months that takes to assemble a PSLV. The SSLV has been developed by ISRO mainly for commercial launches.

The chairman also assured that work was ongoing on the big-ticket missions.

“We have lot of work on hand; there are missions like Chandrayaan-3, Aditya-L1 and Gaganyaan for which activities are going on. We will have the missions at the earliest. As usual, team ISRO will rise to the occasion and do the needful to meet the demand by the Indian government,” said Sivan.

Chandrayaan-3 would be just a lander-rover mission which will use the existing India orbiter from Chandrayaan-2 mission to communicate with Earth. The Chandrayaan-3 mission was announced after the failure of the previous mission to attempt a soft-landing. It was to take place in late 2020 or early 2021, a deadline ISRO is likely to miss due to the pandemic.

Aditya-L1 is India’s first solar mission which will see a satellite travel 1.5 million kilometres away from Earth to the L1 point. The L1 or Lagrangian point, between the Earth and the Sun, is where the gravitational pull of both the bodies on the satellite is equal to centripetal force needed to keep it in orbit.

As for Gaganyaan mission, which aims to place Indian astronauts in low earth orbit, the first of the two planned unmanned mission was to take place in December 2020.