These Are the 6 Singaporean Satellites Being Launched by ISRO Today

At 6:00 pm today, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will launch six Singaporean satellites from the first launch pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh. The satellites will be put into orbit by India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, in its thirty-second flight (PSLV-C29).

By Tanaya Singh

December 16, 2015

At 6:00 pm today, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will launch six Singaporean satellites from the first launch pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh.

The satellites will be put into orbit by India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, in its thirty-second flight (PSLV-C29).

ISRO Satellite — PSLV-C29 on the First Launch Pad with Vehicle Assembly Building in background

PSLV-C29 will launch the satellites into a 550 km circular orbit inclined at 15 degrees to the equator. They will be launched one after the other to avoid collision, and there will be a distance of about 20 kilometres between them. The satellites being launched include one primary satellite and five co-passenger satellites.

The commercial arm of ISRO, Antrix Corporation Limited, has provided launch services for 51 commercial satellites from 20 countries so far. The six satellites being launched today include the following –

TeLEOS-1:

This is the primary satellite weighing 400kg. It is the first Singapore commercial earth observation satellite and it is being launched for remote sensing applications. Designed and developed by Singapore Technologies Electronics, the mission life for this satellite is five years.

VELOX-CI:

This is a micro satellite weighing 123kg. It will be used for research in tropical environmental monitoring using radio occultation techniques.

VELOX-II:

This satellite weight 13 kg and is a 6U-CubeSat technology demonstrator with three payloads – the communications, GPS experimental, and fault tolerant payload. A CubeSat is a type of small satellite used for space research.

Athenoxat-1:

It is a technology demonstrator nano-satellite, designed and developed by Microspace Rapid Pvt. Ltd in Singapore.

Kent Ridge-1:

This is a micro satellite weighing 78 kg, and it has two primary payloads.

Galassia:

A 2U-Cubesat weighing 3.4 kg, this satellite has two payloads.

“The satellites will be able to produce information at a much higher frequency. This will surely be very important when you use it for disaster monitoring in the region like Southeast Asia,” Project Director of the Satellite Programme at the National University of Singapore (NUS), Professor Goh Cher Hiang, said.

The 59-hour countdown for the PSLV-C29/TeLEOS-1 Mission began at 7:00 am on December 14. This is the eleventh fight of PSLV in ‘core-alone’ configuration. In this configuration, the six strap-on boosters used by standard PSLV model is not used.

PSLV-C29 Launch Update: Countdown is in progress. Live telecast by DD National and Webcast is available from 17:30 Hrs IST, tomorrow.
— ISRO (@isro) December 15, 2015

All pictures: isro.gov.in

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