Is the Indian Space Research Organisation’s feat of putting as many as 104 satellites in space simultaneously a remarkable achievement of not?
On Wedsenday morning, an ISRO rocket launched the Indian earth observation satellite Cartosat-2, along with two other nano satellites from India, 96 from the US, and one each from Israel, Kazakhstan, The Netherlands, Switzerland, and the UAE. The PSLV-C37 rocket blasted off from Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, and its payload of 104 satellites beat beat Russia’s 2014 launch of 37 satellites by a wide margin.
The PSLV – Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle – has now made 39 launches, with 37 successfully reaching their planned orbits, one outright failure and one partial failure, yielding a success rate of 95%. ISRO chief AS Kiran Kumar said the idea is to examine just how many satellites the PSLV has the potential to launch simultaneously.
However, there’s another point of view as well. Former ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair told Business Standard that “within the 1500 kg capacity, you can carry as many satellites as possible,” and said the mission was “nothing new”.
He went on to point out that ISRO hasn’t come up with any new technologies, such as life support systems in space, but is simply reaping the benefits of what it had invested in earlier.
Antrix, the commercial wing of ISRO, has been challenging global satellite launch comapnies with cheaper rates.
Here is the full video of the launch.
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