Antrix Corporation is happy to announce that its second full-fledged commercial launch has been successfully completed today. After the final count down, PSLV-C10 lifted off from the First Launch Pad (FLP) at SDSC SHAR at 09:15 Hrs with the ignition of the first stage. Incidentally this is the 25th Satellite Launch Mission from SDSC, SHAR. The launch of TECSAR was executed under a commercial contract between Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and ANTRIX Corporation.
It may be recalled that the first major commercial launch of PSLV (PSLV-C8) took place on April 23, 2007, when it successfully launched an Italian astronomical satellite, AGILE.
The 300 kg TECSAR satellite was placed into its intended orbit with a perigee (nearest point to earth) of 450 km and apogee (farthest point to earth) of 580 km with an orbital inclination of 41 deg with respect to the equator. TECSAR was placed in orbit 1185 sec after lift off.
PSLV has emerged as the workhorse launch vehicle of ISRO with eleven consecutively successful flights so far. Since its first successful launch in 1994, PSLV has launched eight Indian remote sensing satellites, an amateur radio satellite, HAMSAT, a recoverable space capsule, SRE-1, and two primary satellites and six small satellites for foreign customers. Besides, it has launched India’s exclusive meteorological satellite, Kalpana-1, into Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO). PSLV is also slated to launch India’s first spacecraft to moon, Chandrayaan-1, in 2008.
TECSAR is a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Technology satellite. The design, development and fabrication activities of the satellite were led by MBT Space, a division of the Israeli Aerospace industries with the participation of other high tech industries such as ELTA, Tadiran Spectralink, Rafael. The satellite is equipped with a SAR payload with the capability to see through the clouds and carry out day and night all weather imaging.
