India launches five satellites

Three months after the failure of the first GSLV launch vehicle equipped with an Indian-made cryogenic engine, India is once again enjoying success thanks to a safe bet in the shape of its small launch vehicle, PSLV. On Monday 12 July at 9:22am local time (5:52am in continental Europe), PSLV-C15 was launched from the Satish Dawan Space Centre on the island of Sriharikota, and put a payload of five satellites into sun-synchronous orbit. The satellites included the Indian observation satellite Cartosat 2B, the Algerian observation satellite AlSat 2A (built in Toulouse by Astrium), the Studsat picosatellite (the 1^st satellite designed by Indian students) and two nanosatellites, the Norwegian satellite AISSat 1 (for monitoring ships) and the Swiss satellite TIsat 1 (for the University of Ticino).

Liftoff of PSLV-C15, on 12 July 2010.
Credit: ISRO.

At the same time, the cause of the GSLV-D3 launch failure on 15 April 2010 has been identified as a malfunction in the liquid hydrogen turbo pump supplying the new motor developed by India to replace the Russian stages which equipped the first GSLV models. The return to flight of the new version is already scheduled for next year.

Based on the CNES Myriade platform, AISat 2A is capable of supplying images with a resolution of 2.5m in black and white and 10m in colour.
Credit: Astrium, F. Jama

ISRO press release

Astrium press release

ALL THE LATEST NEWS

Soyuz in Guiana

This is the mythical rocket par excellence, the one that launched Sputnik, the first satellite and Gagarin, the first man in space. The CSG, Guiana Space Centre, is now one of its launch bases: a historic achievement.
Star Trek and NASA

The first episode of this famous science-fiction series was broadcast in September 1966. NASA has often made references to these programmes, as in the case of the space shuttle Enterprise, which had the same name as the spaceship in the series.
Alan Shepard, from suborbital to the Moon

50 years ago on 5 May 1961, a few weeks after Gagarin, American Alan Shepard reached space. Several years later, he was to walk on the Moon, summarising as it were the race in which the Soviet Union and the United States were competing.