An Indian rocket nearly 14 storeys tall on Wednesday ferried into Earth orbit a 2,250kg satellite designed to upgrade position, navigation and time services, marking the 100th launch from India’s spaceport of Sriharikota island off the Andhra Pradesh coast.
The Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), powered by a homegrown cryogenic engine, blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC), Sriharikota, at 6.23am and released its payload, the NVS-02 satellite, at an altitude of about 322km 19 minutes later.
The NVS-02 satellite is the second in India’s planned constellation of navigation satellites designed to provide accurate position, velocity, and timing services to users across India and a region extending up to 1,500km beyond the Indian landmass. The GSLV injected the satellite into a 170km by 36,695km elliptical orbit from where it will be nudged into its final geosynchronous parking slot.
The Indian Space Research Organisation has said the constellation will provide a position accuracy of better than 20 metres and a timing accuracy of better than 40 nanoseconds over the service area. Isro had launched the first in the constellation NVS-01 in May 2023.
The launch was the 17th flight of the GSLV and the 11th flight powered by an indigenous version of the technologically challenging cryogenic engine that uses liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen as fuel.
The new Isro chairman, V. Narayanan, described the launch as a “milestone”, the 100th from SDSC since the first launch of the Satellite Launch Vehicle-3 (SLV-3) more than 45 years ago in August 1979.