An Indian rocket dispatched three satellites and an experimental orbiting outlet on Thursday morning on the vehicle’s 55th mission.
The four-stage, 145.7-foot-tall Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) was launched from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in southeastern India on Thursday at 8:33 a.m. EDT into the open blue sky in what was defined as “a marvelous liftoff” by the mission newscaster.
The rocket’s phases separated perfectly as planned, with payload separation starting at 8:53 a.m. EDT.
“PSLV C 53 has placed the customer satellites … in the precise orbit of 570 kilometer [354 miles] with a 10-degree inclination,” chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Shri S. Somanath announced in a post-launch speech. “So with this, today’s mission, all these three satellites are placed in the right orbit. And I hope that the further activities will be taken up and the mission will be a complete success for our customers.”
The PSLV held up three satellites on this mission, all of which were from Singapore. The largest is an 805-pound Earth-observation craft called DS-EO, which “will provide full-color images for land classification and serv[e] humanitarian assistance and disaster relief needs,” ISRO officials wrote in a mission description.
NeuSAR is also going up on Thursday. It’s a 342-pound (155 kg) commercial satellite that will picture Earth utilizing synthetic aperture radar. The third spacecraft, Scoob-1, was created by students at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. It weighs only 6.2 pounds, according to the ISRO mission.
