- The Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) PSLV-C43 on November 29, 2018 successfully launched 31 satellites from Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Sriharikota.
- The PSLV-C43 lifted off the First Launch Pad and injected India’s Hyper-Spectral Imaging Satellite (HysIS) into the 645 km sun-synchronous polar orbit, 17 minutes and 19 seconds after the lift-off.
- Later, 30 foreign satellites were injected into their intended orbit after restarting the vehicles fourth stage engines twice.
About HysIS
- HysIS is an earth observation satellite built around ISRO’s Mini Satellite-2 (IMS-2) bus weighing about 380kg.
- The mission life of the satellite is five years.
- The primary goal of HysIS is to study the earth’s surface in both the visible, near infrared and shortwave infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum.
- Data from the satellite will be used for a wide range of applications including agriculture, forestry, soil/geological environments, coastal zones and inland waters, etc.
Foreign Satellites
- HysIS had the company of one micro and 29 nano-satellites from eight countries, including Australia (1), Canada (1), Columbia (1), Finland (1), Malaysia (1), Netherlands (1), Spain (1) and USA (23).
- The total weight of these satellites was about 261.50 kg.
- Satellites from Australia, Columbia, Malaysia and Spain were flown aboard PSLV for the first time. These foreign satellites launched are part of commercial arrangements between Antrix Corporation Limited and customers.
- ISRO Chairman Dr K Sivan said that the team has achieved another spectacular mission 15 days after the successful GSLV-MkIII/GSAT-29 launch.
- HysIS is a state-of-the-art satellite with many indigenous components developed by SAC, Ahmedabad and SCL, Chandigarh.
About PSLV
- PSLV is a four stage launch vehicle with a large solid rocket motor forming the first stage, an earth storable liquid stage as the second stage, a high performance solid rocket motor as third stage and a liquid stage with engines as fourth stage.
- It was the 45th flight of PSLV and 13th one in the Core Alone configuration.
- So far, the PSLV has launched 44 Indian and nine satellites built by students from Indian universities.
- The vehicle has also launched 269 international customer satellites.
- In the last PSLV launch on September 16, PSLV-C42 had successfully launched two commercial satellites from UK-based Surrey Satellite Technology Limited
