July, 2010 - Nocturnalknight's Lair

PSLV launch successful, 5 satellites placed in orbit

By Ramkumar Sundarakalatharan | July 21, 2010 | Comments 0 Comment

In a textbook launch, India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) on Monday successfully placed into orbit remote sensing satellite Cartosat-2B and four other satellites after a perfect lift off from the spaceport here.

At the end of an over 51-hour countdown, the 44.4 metre-tall four-stage PSLV-C-15, costing Rs260 crore, blasted off from a launch pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre with ignition of the core first stage and placed the satellites in orbit one after the other.

Visibly relieved scientists, headed by Isro chairman Dr K Radhakrishnan, cheered as Isro’s workhorse PSLV soared into clear skies at 9.22 AM from the spaceport in the East Coast in Andhra Pradesh, about 100 km north of Chennai.

The PSLV launch assumes significance as it comes about three months after Isro suffered a major setback on 15 April when the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV-D3), which was launched using an Indian-designed and built cryogenic engine for the first time, failed and fell into the Bay of Bengal.

Cartosat-2B is an advanced remote sensing satellite built by Isro. This is the latest in the Indian remote sensing satellite series and the 17th in this series.

Cartosat-2B is mainly intended to augment remote sensing data services to the users of multiple spot scene imagery with 0.8 metre spatial resolution and 9.6 km swath in the panchromatic.

Cartosat-2 and 2A, two Indian remote sensing satellites in orbit, are currently providing such services.

A set of four satellites including Studsat built by students of seven engineering colleges in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, Alsat from Algeria, two nano satellites from Canada and Switzerland, and a pico (very small) satellite called Oceansat 2 accompanied Cartosat 2 on its trip to orbit.

Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahuluwalia, and former Isro chief Dr K Kasturirangan witnessed the launch.

“It has been a wonderful experience. The Isro has made the country proud,” Ahluwalia said, congratulating the scientists after the perfect take off.

Attributing the success of PSLV C-15 to the entire team behind the mission, Isro chairman K Radhakrishnan said, “We had an excellent flight. It injected precisely the five satellites. The entire Isro team is behind the success”.

In an apparent reference to the failure of GSLV D3 cryogenic stage, the space agency’s first mission after he took over as its chief, he said his team of scientists were inspired to work “especially after the last few weeks after a serious problem that we faced.”

“And I also want to say we have understood the problem with regard to the indigenous cryogenic engine and stage. We will confirm it in a few weeks with a few tests and then we will come back”, he said.

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Russian resupply ship docks at International Space Station

By Ramkumar Sundarakalatharan | July 5, 2010 | Comments 0 Comment

An unmanned Russian supply vessel docked Sunday without trouble at the International Space Station, two days after a technical glitch forced a similar maneuver to be aborted.

Space officials said they managed to avoid the radio signal problems that forced them to abandon last week’s docking of the Progress M-06M cargo ship, launched on June 30, is carrying 2.6 tonnes of fuel, food and water for the three Russia and three US astronauts on the station.

“At 20:17 pm Moscow time (16H17 GMT), the ‘Progress M-06M’ docked at the ‘Star’ module of the ISS,” the Russian Mission Control Centre said in an Internet statement.

An attempted docking on Friday was aborted when a radio link with the ISS was lost about 25 minutes before the planned rendezvous.

Sunday’s successful docking was done automatically under the supervision of experts in Moscow and the ISS team, it said, without using the radio link.

Progress launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on June 30.

It is the 40th Russian cargo vessel to dock at the station, the centre said.

In contrast to the troubles that plagued the first rendezvous attempt, Sunday’s second try “was executed flawlessly,” the US space agency NASA said on its website.

The space ship’s failure to dock last week after flying past the ISS was notable largely because it was rare mishap in a space programme which usually strives for and achieves pinpoint accuracy.

During the mishap “in the beginning everything was normal, then the automatic (docking) mode failed, and later the station’s crew could not dock the vessel in manual mode,” a Russian space centre spokesman told the Itar-Tass news agency.

The automatic docking system also failed during the last Progress supply ship docking in May although the process was successfully carried out manually.

The ISS, which orbits 350 kilometres (220 miles) above Earth, is a sophisticated platform for scientific experiments, helping test the effects of long-term space travel on humans, a must for any trip to distant Mars.

Progress is carrying 1,918 pounds (862 kilos) of propellant, 110 pounds (50 kilos) of oxygen, 220 pounds (100 kilos) of water and 2,667 pounds (1,210 kilos) of experiment equipment, spare parts and other supplies to the station.

The rendezvous occurred 220 miles (350 kilometers) above Earth as both the ISS and resupply ship flew over the point where the borders of China, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia intersect.

Progress is similar in appearance and design elements to the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, which brings crew members to the station, serves as a lifeboat while they are there and returns them to Earth. And unlike Soyuz, Progress has a refuelling module and a cargo module.

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