Heena Sharma Blog

India early Friday launched a communication satellite called GSAT-30 from French Guiana on the northeast coast of South America, aiming to use the space device to improve broadcasting and connectivity in the country. European space consortium Arianespace's Ariane 5 VA-251 rocket lifted off from Kourou, the launch base, at 2:35 am IST to carry GSAT-30 for the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and the Eutelsat Konnect satellite for the French telecommunications company Eutelsat. After a flight lasting 38 minutes 25 seconds, GSAT-30 separated from Ariane 5 upper stage in an elliptical Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit. “ The satellite will provide communication services to Indian mainland and islands through Ku-band and wide coverage covering Gulf countries, a large number of Asian countries and Australia through C-band,” said ISRO chairman K Sivan in a statement. Read More

The Indian Space Research Organisation has gotten over the setback it suffered on account of the Chandrayaan-2 mission , and has ended the year with six launch vehicle missions and seven satellite missions. The number is lower than that achieved in 2018, when Isro had completed 16 missions and was preparing for some major milestones, including the launch of Chandrayaan-2, preparing for India's first human space programme 'Gaganyaan' and its mission to the Sun: Aditya-1. At the beginning of the year 2019, Isro said it was planning as many as 32 missions, including 14 launch vehicles, 17 satellite and one Technology Demonstration missions. The complex Chandrayaan-2 and the development flights of Small Satellite Launch Vehicle or SSLVs, were an intrinsic part of this plan. SSLVs are the new member in the Launch Vehicle family. After completing 16 missions in 2018, Isro started the year 2019 not with a launch, but with the signing of an MoU with industries to outsourc...

The mood was euphoric on Monday at the mission control room of the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (Isro’s) Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Sriharikota. At 2.43 pm the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle-Mk III (GSLV-Mk III), carrying the 3.8-tonne Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft, lifted off from its launchpad. GSLV-Mk III cost Rs 375 crore and Chandrayaan-2 Rs 603 crore. After a technical snag aborting the takeoff on July 15, the space agency succeeded in putting the satellite on the desired orbit, or a better orbit, as the first step of its 48-day journey to the moon’s unexplored south pole, about 384,000 km away. President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated Isro and its scientists on this feat. Before the launch, however, it was a tense situation at the mission control room with former Isro chiefs A S Kiran Kumar and K Radhakrishnan, among others, watching the proceedings from the gallery. There was no lighthearted conversation as t...