New Delhi: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) adds another feather in its cap today after successfully placing all the eight satellites, including SCATSAT-1 weather satellite, in two different orbits. This was ISRO's first multi-orbital launch.


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At 9.12 a:m today, the PSLV-C35 carrying the 371 kg SCATSAT-1 along with seven other satellites, including from the US and Canada, blast off from the first launch pad of Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR, Sriharikota.


Watch the launch here!



 


The total weight of all the eight satellites onboard PSLV C-35 is about 675 kg, ISRO said.


This two hours and fifteen minutes long space mission is the longest PSLV satellite launch mission of ISRO so far.


About 17 minutes into the launch, PSLV rocket injected its main cargo SCATSAT-1 - for ocean and weather related studies - into a 730 km polar sun synchronous orbit, the rest were placed into a lower orbit of 689 km after around two hours.


The mission objectives of SCATSAT-1 are to help provide weather forecasting services to the user communities through the generation of wind vector products for weather forecasting, cyclone detection and tracking, ISRO said.


SCATSAT-1 is a continuity mission for scatterometer payload carried by the earlier Oceansat-2 satellite.


Besides SCATSAT-1, the others are PRATHAM and PISAT, two academic satellites from India, ALSAT-1B, ALSAT-2B and ALSAT-1N (all from Algeria) and Pathfinder-1 and NLS-19, from USA and Canada, respectively.


The 48-and-a-half-hour countdown for PSLV-C35/SCATSAT-1 Mission started at 8:42 a:m on Saturday.


According to ISRO, this is the 15th flight of PSLV in 'XL' configuration with the use of solid strap-on motors.


(With Agency inputs)