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| India to launch 1st foreign satellite in April | | | Mar | 19
MUMBAI: India's first dedicated and full-fledged commercial launch of a foreign satellite will lift off the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, between April 18 and 25, 2007, director of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre B N Suresh has said.
The-360 kg satellite 'Agile', belongs to Italy and will carry out astronomical studies. The rocket will be the highly-proven four-stage polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV). "In all probability the launch will be on April 23, 2007," he told TOI on Sunday.
Explaining the significance of the mission, Suresh said till now an Indian satellite has always been the main one in a flight, while the rest, which were generally foreign payloads, were co-passengers. "This is the first time that the roles have been reversed. A foreign satellite will be the main passenger in our rocket, and one of our experiments will be piggy backing on it," he said.
The Indian payload is a small advanced avionics module which will carry out tests. "The advanced avionics suite will then be incorporated into the future flights of the geo synchronous satellite launch vehicle and PSLV. For the Indian space programme, the April flight will be a historical one," he stated.
India has launched satellites belonging to South Korea, Belgium, Indonesia and Argentina to name some of the countries and they were all co-passengers. He said that ISRO chairman Madhavan Nair flagged off 'Agile' launch campaign at 2 pm on January 22, 2007, about four hours after the successful splashdown in the Bay of Bengal of the space capsule recovery experiment (SRE). The final countdown is expected to begin at T-55 hours before the flight which means 55 hours prior to the take off.
Suresh said SRE, which space scientists call as India's first heavenly body, will be put on display in Space Museum at Thumba near Thiruvanathanapuram. "We will be first displaying it at the Kanuka Kunna Palace in Thiruvanathanapuram," he said.
About "Chandrayaan-1," the much-awaited Indian lunar mission, he said the moon impact probe (MIP) which is taking shape at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvanathanapuram, will crash-land on one of the lunar polar regions. The probe will detach itself from the main lunar spacecraft and after an 18-minute flight will hit the polar region of the moon.
"Scientists are keen that it should land on the polar region since it will be scientifically very useful," he said. The probe has a camera which will continuously take pictures while approaching the moon and a spectrometer for carrying out estimates of chemical constituents of the lunar surface. One of the main roles of the probe will be two evaluate technologies for future soft landing on the moon.
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