As per the latest reports, ISRO has announced that it will launch 31 satellites to space in a single mission.

All the 31 satellites, including India’s own Cartosat-2 series Earth Observation spacecraft, will be launched at a time onboard its Polar rocket on January 10.

The satellite launch mission will be the first PSLV mission since August. In the month of August, PSLV’s launch of the navigation satellite IRNSS-1H became unsuccessful. 

A senior ISRO official said the upcoming launch event is tentatively scheduled for January 10. According to

ISRO, the PSLV mission’s main payload will be India’s Cartosat-2 series earth observation satellite.

The senior ISRO official informed that Launch Authorization Board and The Mission Readiness Review committee will be meeting next week to take a final call regarding the launching of the mission. 

The PSLV-C40 rocket is finalized to carry the 31 satellites to the lower Earth Orbit, the launch will take place from Sriharikota launch site in Andhra Pradesh.

The 31 satellites include 28 nano satellites from countries outside India including the US and Finland. The rest three satellites include a micro satellite and a nano satellite and a larger Cartosat satellite of India.

Back in August, the PSLV-C39 launch, carrying the backup navigation satellite IRNSS-1H, became a failure owing to a technical fault that occurred during the final leg after a perfect launch. 

ISRO finally cracked the region behind the unsuccessful launch and informed that the heat shield did not separate on the final leg of the launch sequence. Hence, the IRNSS-1H satellite got stuck in the fourth stage of the rocket.

Informing about the upcoming launch, ISRO said that Cartosat-2 series satellite launch is a follow-on mission with the main aim of delivering high-resolution scene-specific spot imageries. 

ISRO said that the Cartosat-2 satellite has Panchromatic and Multi-spectral cameras fitted inside it that operate in Time Delay Integration and have the capability of providing high-resolution data.

The upcoming launch of the Cartosat satellite will be the third installation of the Cartosat-2 series. Earlier in February, PSLV-C37 launched the first Cartosat-2 series satellite along with a record 103 satellites at a time. 

Again in June, another Cartosat-2 series satellite was launched along with 30 co-passenger satellites in a single flight. This marked the 39th consecutive successful mission of PSLV.

Source : DD