The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched the country’s first space mission and 51st mission of Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) on Saturday. The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle named as PSLV-C49 was launched from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota today afternoon. It was carrying the all-weather earth imaging satellite EOS-01 from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) along with nine international satellites.
According to a tweet from the official ISRO handle, all the nine satellites and EOS-01 have successfully separated and injected into their intended orbit.
#ISRO #EOS01
— ISRO (@isro) November 7, 2020
All nine customer satellites successfully separated and injected into their intended orbit#PSLVC49 pic.twitter.com/rrtL3sVAI3
The lift off was scheduled for 15:02 hours IST today but the mission was delayed by 10 minutes due to bad weather. The delay was sanctioned by the mission director.
The launching of the EOS-01 holds special significance for the ISRO and the Space Organisation chief K Sivan, who said that the space activity cannot be worked upon from a remote location and it requires engineers and technicians to come together for a successful launch.
“This mission is very special and unusual for ISRO. The space activity cannot be done from ‘work from home’. Each engineer has to be present at the lab. When talking about missions like these, each technician, employee has to work together,” Sivan said.
Earth Observation Satellite
ISRO today launched its Earth Observation Satellite EOS-01 through PSLV C-49. The satellite is meant for applications in agriculture, forestry and disaster management support.
This is the second earth observation satellite launched by ISRO within a span of one year. Last year on December 11, ISRO had launched a similar mission, through which it had launched RISAT-2BR1, another observation satellite similar to EOS-01. Following that, ISRO had launched a communication satellite GSAT-30 in space in January this year, but that was done using an Ariane rocket launched from French Guiana.
EOS-01 will work in conjunction with RISAT-2B and RISAT-2BR1 launched last year. It was earlier supposed to be named as RISAT-2BR2 as it was assumed to be the third of the three-spacecraft constellation aimed at providing all-weather round-the-clock service for high-resolution images. With EOS-01, India has moved towards a new naming convention.
Through the recently launched satellite, mapping and monitoring of land, forests, mapping of resources like water or minerals or fishes, weather and climate observations, soil assessment, and geospatial contour mapping will be possible.
EOS-0 was launched alongside 9 other customer satellites under a commercial agreement with NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), Department of Space. The customer satellites include one from Lithuania for technology demonstration, and four each from Luxembourg and USA for maritime applications and multi-mission remote sensing respectively.
