UPSC Exam Current Affairs-PSLV C 20 Carrying seven Satellites launched successfully in to space from Sriharkota

PSLV C 20 Carrying seven Satellites launched successfully in to space from Sriharkota

The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, PSLV C 20, carrying seven satellites, has been launched successfully. 

It took off at 6.01pm from the first launch pad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota this evening.

President Pranab Mukherjee, Minister of State in Prime Minister’s Office, V.Narayanasamy, Andhra Pradesh Governor E.S.L.Narasimhan, and Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy witnessed the successful launch of the 101st satellite mission.

The first mission of the year, PSLV C 20, though had a five minute delay, had a perfect take off from the Space Centre. 

Beginning its first mission for the year today, ISRO is poised to launch nine other missions this year including journey to MARS.

SARAL, one of the satellites launched by PSLV C-20, was built by India and France and is the first of its kind under Indian Mini satellite bus series 2 configured for 400 kg satellites.

It will be useful for operational as well as research user communities in fields like marine meteorology and sea state forecasting, management and protection of marine eco-system, environmental monitoring and improvement of maritime security.

The other six satellites which would be put into orbit are two Canadian satellite NEOSSat (Near Earth Object Space Surveillance Satellite), the world's first space telescope designed by Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and Sapphire satellite built by MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA), BRITE and UniBRITE (both Austria), STRaND-1 (Britain) and AAUSAT (Denmark).

The 6.5 kg STRaND-1 (Surrey Training, Research, and Nanosatellite Demonstrator) is the world's first 'smart phone satellite' carrying Google Nexus One phone running on Android operating system. The phone will run several applications including collection of data and take pictures of the earth with its camera.

According to CSA, the satellite NEOSSat will detect and track asteroids and satellites circling the globe every 100 minutes and scanning space near the Sun to pin point otherwise almost invisible asteroids.

The satellite will also be useful in tracking resident space objects including space debris.Sapphire will look for resident space objects that include functioning satellites and space debris circling between 6,000 km and 40,000 km above the earth

India has encouraged commercial ventures into space since 1999 and has so far put a total of 35 foreign satellites into orbit.