India has successfully launched a new light carrier SSLV. It put three satellites into low Earth orbit. In August last year, this rocket crashed at launch.
India launches SSLV rocket
On the night of February 9-10, India successfully launched its new light rocket. The SSLV carrier launched at 5:48 a. m. GMT+2 from the Satish Dhawan Cosmodrome. It put the Earth observation satellite EOS-07 of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and two CubeSats into low Earth orbit.
SSLV is a new carrier that ISRO has high hopes for. At a height of 34 meters, this rocket is capable of launching a payload weighing up to 500 kg into low Earth orbit. However, the last attempt to launch it, which took place in August 2022, ended in failure.
Why did the previous attempt fail?
Last time SSLV launched from the same Satish Dhawan Cosmodrome on August 6, 2022. It was supposed to put into orbit the EOS-02 observation satellite and the AzaadiSAT CubeSat, built by students.
But during the separation of the second stage, a short-term but strong vibration occurred. It overloaded all six accelerometers of the navigation system. As a result, the rocket went into “rescue mode”. Although both spacecraft separated from it, they could not gain the necessary speed and fell into the ocean quickly enough.
Last week, ISRO officials announced that they made a number of steps to ensure that this would not happen again. In particular, the separation system of the first and second stages was completely replaced. And, it seemed, it gave its result.
What are launched satellites?
EOS-07 is a 156 kg satellite that is supposed to demonstrate new technologies for Earth observation. They are a humidity measuring instrument operating in the millimeter range and a spectrograph. It is expected that the device will work for a year.
Janus-1 weighs 10.2 kg. It was created by the American-Indian company Antaris and it is characterized as a “smart satellite” built to demonstrate technology. AzaadiSAT-2 is another training satellite built by hundreds of Indian female students.
According to www.space.com
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