ISRO’s heaviest rocket with 36 satellites on board lifts off

Indian Space Research Organisation’s heaviest rocket, LVM3-M2, on its maiden commercial mission on October 23 successfully placed 36 broadband communication satellites of a U.K.-based customer in the intended orbits, the space agency said, describing the mission as ‘historic’.

With this success, ISRO put behind the anomaly experienced in its August 7 Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) mission, that had then made the satellites unusable.

A beaming ISRO Chairman S. Somanath announced Deepavali had started early for the scientists at the space agency.

“LVM3 M2/OneWeb India-1 mission is completed successfully. All the 36 satellites have been placed into intended orbits. @NSIL_India @OneWeb,” ISRO said in a tweet, minutes after Somanath announced that 16 satellites have been placed in the desired orbits while the rest would take some more time.

All the 36 satellites were injected into the orbits around 75 minutes after the rocket blasted off from the spaceport in Sriharikota at 12.07 a.m. IST.

LVM3-M2 is the dedicated commercial satellite mission of NewSpace India Ltd. (NSIL), a Central public sector enterprise under the Department of Space, Government of India.

With this launch, LVM3 is making its entry into the “global commercial launch service market”. This mission is being undertaken as part of the commercial arrangement entered into between NSIL and Network Access Associates Limited (m/s OneWeb Ltd), a U.K.-based company.

ISRO’s dedicated commercial satellite mission LVM3-M2/OneWeb India-1 lifts off on Sunday.
| Photo Credit: B. Jothi Ramalingam

As part of this mission 36 OneWeb Gen-1 satellites, meant for global connectivity needs, will be launched into circular low earth orbit of 601 km altitude.

This mission is the fifth flight of LVM3. And this is the first Indian rocket with a six tonne payload.

(With PTI inputs)