AKA: Sriharikota FLP;Sriharikota LP1. First Launch: 1993-09-20. Last Launch: 2014-06-30. Number: 24 . Longitude: 80.23 deg. Latitude: 13.73 deg.
DLR-Tubsat carried on the experimental work of Tubsat-A and -B. The satellite measured 32x32x32 cm and had a mass of 44.8 kg. The dechnology demonstrator conducted earth observation with 6 m resolution and conducted attitude control experiments. It was still in operation as of 2003.
Experimental Rural Communications satellite. Launch delayed following pad abort on March 28. First launch of the Indian GSLV launch vehicle. GSat 1 was an Indian, 1500 kg scaled-dow) test model of a future geosynchronous communications spacecraft with a 440 N ISRO liquid apogee motor, and S-band and C-band ommunications transponders, similar to the Insat-2 satellites. The motor for the cryogenic, hydrogen-oxygen upper stage had been purchased from Russia but the design had never flown in space before. The stage cut off without providing the required delta-V - preliminary analysis revealed a shortfall of 0.5% in the thrust. An attempt was made to reach a usable orbit using the station-keeping motor of the GSAT satellite itself. After a series of burns, GSat 1 ran out of propellant - 10 kg more fuel would have been required to reach a stationary orbit. In the end, the parameters of the drifting (about 13 deg/day) orbit were period 23 hours, apogee 35,665 km, perigee 33,806 km, and inclination 0.99 deg. The fully functional transponders and transmitters on board were deactivated on instructions of the International Telecommunications Union. As of 4 September 2001 located at 54.88 deg E drifting at 13.212 deg E per day. As of 2007 Mar 10 located at 50.16W drifting at 12.778E degrees per day.
Launch delayed from July 20. The PS4 upper stage deployed the 1108 kg Indian TES (Technology Experiment Satellite) into a sun-synchronous orbit at 05:09:10 GMT. TES was an imaging satellite equipped with cameras and instruments to test military reconnaissance satellite technology. It was probably based on the IRS remote sensing satellite and carried a one-meter resolution panchromatic camera. India decided to develop an independent indigenous reconnaissance satellite capability after the 1999 incursion of Pakistani troops into disputed territory in Kashmir caught it by surprise. TES was developed by ISRO, the Indian Space Research Organization.
BIRD (Bispectral IR Detector) was a 94 kg German research minisatellite testing a new sensor for Earth imaging studies, detecting forest fires and other hot spots and studying vegetation changes. BIRD was released by the PS4 upper stage 40 seconds after the primary TES satellite payload had been deployed. The technology demonstrator was to help in the design a major remote sensing array of infrared detectors.
Proba (PRoject for On-Board Autonomy, 1) was a European Space Agency technology development minisatellite with a mass of 94 kg. It carried a radiation detector, an IR spectrometer, debris impact detectors, Earth imaging cameras, and an experimental spacecraft processor for spacecraft autonomy experiments. The satellite was built by Verheart in Belgium using the MiniSIL bus developed by SI of England, and was controlled from Belgium. After release of the TES and BIRD satellites, the PS4's upper stage small RCS engines raised the orbit to 553 x 676 km, and PROBA was ejected at 0520 GMT.
METSAT 1 was an Indian (ISRO) meteorological, geostationary satellite that was launched by an upgraded, four-stage PSLV-C4 rocket. The satellite was manoeuvred from the transfer orbit to a geostationary postion at 37° E longitude on September 16, and then was parked at 74° E longitude on September 24. As of 2007 Mar 11 located at 74.00E drifting at 0.007W degrees per day.
Experimental Rural Communications. Launch delayed from original target of late 2001, then October 2002, then February 2003. The satellite carried four C-band transponders, two Ku-band transponders and a Mobile Satellite Service (MSS) payload operating in S-band and C-band for forward link and return link respectively. GSAT-2 also carried four piggyback experimental payloads: Total Radiation Dose Monitor (TRDM), Surface Charge Monitor (SCM), Solar X-ray Spectrometer (SOXS) and Coherent Radio Beacon Experiment (CRABEX). As of 2007 Mar 10 located at 47.97E drifting at 0.005E degrees per day.
Gsat-3 / Edusat was the first Indian satellite built exclusively for the educational sector. It was mainly intended to meet the demand for an interactive satellite based distance education system for India. Edusat was launched into a geosynchronous transfer orbit by its launch vehicle. Edusat was to reach geostationary orbit by firing, in stages, its on board Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM). In geostationary orbit the satellite was to be co-located with Kalpana-1 and Insat-3C satellites at 74 deg East longitude.
Compared to earlier satellites in the Insat series, Edusat used several new technologies. The spacecraft was built around the I-2K standardised spacecraft bus. It had a multiple spot beam antenna with a 1.2 m reflector to direct Ku band spot beams, a dual core bent heat pipe for thermal control, high efficiency multi-junction solar cells and an improved thruster configuration for optimised propellant use for orbit and orientation maintenance. The satellite used radiatively cooled Ku-band Travelling Wave Tube Amplifiers and a dielectrically loaded C-band demultiplexer for its communication payloads. Edusat carried five Ku-band transponders providing spot beams, one Ku-band transponder providing a national beam and six Extended C-band transponders with a national coverage beam. It was to join the Insat system that already provided more than 130 transponders in C-band, Extended C-band and Ku-band for a variety of telecommunication and television services.
First operational flight of launch vehicle. Launch delayed from July, August and September 10. Dry mass 820 kg. As of 2007 Mar 9 located at 73.92E drifting at 0.006W degrees per day.
India's Space Recovery Experiment-1 India's SRE-1 first lowered to its orbit to 485 km x 643 km on January 20. A 10-minute deorbit burn began at 03:30 GMT on January 22, with re-entry beginning at 04:07 and a successful splashdown at 04:16 GMT in the Bay of Bengal near 13.3 N / 81.4E. The capsule was successfully recovered by the Indian Navy. The capsule returned two microgravity payloads as well as proving basic technologies for any eventual Indian manned space program. It was also announced that the capsule could be used to orbit further microgravity payloads at low cost to customers.
The satellite was the twelfth in the Indian Remote Sensing satellite series and was capable of providing scene-specific spot imagery. The panchromatic camera provided imagery with a spatial resolution of better than one metre and a swath of 9.6 km. Data from the satellite was to be used for detailed mapping.
Surveillance satellite. Carried the LISS-4 camera, a 6-meter-resolution imager, which was to be used for both military reconnaissance and civilian remote sensing. It also carried the lower resolution LISS-3 (23 m resolution) and AWIFS (56 m resolution), and an AIS Automatic Identification System payload for Comdev of Canada for tracking ships at sea.
First Indian mission to Mars. Carried 15 kg of instruments, including a color camera, but primary purpose was to test technologies for future planetary missions. Carried 850 kg of propellant for trans-Mars ejection and insertion into Martian orbit on arrival there. The MOS was inserted in elliptical Earth orbit; it used its own propulsion to achieve trans-Mars injection. The fourth stage and MOM payload entered a 251 x 23,892 km x 19.4 deg orbit with first perigee over the South Pacific. On November 7 the orbit was raised to 259 x 28,726 km, and on November 8 to over 70,000 km apogee. A further burn on November 10 delivered only 35 m/s, raising the apogee less than planned. A makeup burn on November 11 fixed the problem, and a burn on November 15 put the spacecraft in a 853 x 194,683 km x 19.4 deg orbit. A final perigee burn at 19:19 GMT on November 30 accelerated MOM to a hyperbolic Earth escape trajectory, and it entered an 0.98 x 1.45 AU solar orbit on December 3 on the way to Mars.
For the National University of Singapore, the 78 kg Kent Ridge 1 satellite developed using the TUBSAT LEOS-50 bus by Berlin Space Technologies, a spinoff of the old TUBSAT group at Technische Universitat Berlin. KR-1 carried two low-resoluton hyperspectral Earth imagers and a 6-meter-resolution imager.
India's PSLV-C35 vehicle was launched on Sep 26 with a cluster of small satellites. For the first time, the PS4 final stage made multiple burns to deliver payloads to different orbits. Its first burn reached a 718 x 732 km orbit at 0358 UTC, and ISRO's SCATSAT ocean wind speed scatterometer mission was deployed at 0359. At 0504 and 0554 UTC two more burns reached a 661 x 704 km orbit and the DLA dual launch adapter was ejected, followed by deployment of the remaining payloads. PRATHAM from IIT Bombay, with an ionospheric science instrument 0930LT SSO
See Cartosat 2D. India's PSLV placed a record 104 payloads in orbit on Feb 15, 100 of them via 25 QuadPack cubesat dispensers from the Dutch company ISISSpace. The main payload was the 714 kg `Cartosat-2 series satellite', the fourth such imaging payload from ISRO.