Gulf News, UAE

ISRO places Italian satellite into orbit

24 April 2007

Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, (IANS): India yesterday joined an elite cub of six nations with capabilities to launch commercial satellites when it put an Italian astronomical satellite into orbit from the space centre here. The polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV-C8) lifted off into the azure afternoon sky from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre and shortly thereafter placed the 352-kg AGILE satellite into orbit.

What was also significant about the launch was that a European nation had picked the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for the launch ahead of more experienced players like France and Russia that between them have launched over 800 space missions.

An upbeat ISRO chief G. Madhavan Nair described the launch as "very dutiful, perfect and accurate." "The launch is also cost-effective and on time. This is also a remarkable entry for us in the commercial field," Nair said.

Giovanni Dignami, president of the Italian space agency ASI, said: "It is an extremely important achievement for our country's and the entire space community. I am proud to be standing here. This marks a new beginning of a new era of collaboration among Italy, Europe and India."

Besides AGILE, India's advanced avionic module (AAM), the secondary payload weighing 183 kg, was also placed in orbit. AAM consists of next generation mission computers, and navigation and telemetry systems.

Since its first successful flight in 1994, the PSLV has launched eight Indian remote sensing satellites, an amateur radio satellite HAMSAT, a recoverable space capsule SRE-1 and six small satellites for foreign customers into 550-800 km-high polar sun synchronous orbits (SSO). Besides, it has launched India's exclusive meteorological satellite Kalpana-1 into a geo synchronous transfer orbit (GTO).

The PSLV will also be used to launch India's first mission to the moon, Chandrayaan-1, next year. The PSLV was originally designed to place the 1,000-kg class of India's remote sensing satellites into a 900-km polar SSO. Since then, its payload capability has been successively enhanced.

Excerpts

*****