ISRO Achieves Milestone-Hits A Century

By R Anil Kumar

Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, January 29. In their 100^th launch from Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, ISRO successfully launched the GSLV-F15 carrying the NVS-02.

The Indian Space Research Organisation successfully launched the GSLV-F15 carrying the NVS-02 at 6:23 AM at Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh.

This is ISRO’s first launch in 2025 and after Dr V Narayanan took over as the space agency’s chairman earlier this month. This is ISRO’s 100^th launch from the country’s space port.

“The GLSV-F15 has placed NVS-02 in the intended orbit. The mission is successful,” declared ISRO chairman Dr Narayanan.

GSLV-F15 is the 17th flight of India’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) and 11th flight with Indigenous Cryogenic stage. It is the 8th operational flight of GSLV with an indigenous Cryogenic stage. GSLV-F15 payload fairing is a metallic version with a diameter of 3.4 meters.

The GSLV-F15 with indigenous Cryogenic stage placed NVS-02 satellite into a Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit, ISRO said in a statement.

NVS-02 is the second satellite in the NVS series, and part of India’s Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC), an independent regional navigation satellite system designed to provide accurate Position, Velocity and Timing (PVT)service to users in India, as well as to a region extending about 1,500 km beyond the Indian land mass.

NavIC will provide two types of services, namely, Standard Positioning Service (SPS) and Restricted Service (RS), while its SPS provides a position accuracy of better than 20 m (2σ) and timing accuracy better than 40 ns (2σ) over the service area, the ISRO said.

NVS-01 is the first of the second-generation satellite which already flew with an indigenous atomic clock on May 29, 2023. Like its predecessor, NVS-02, the second satellite in the NVS series is configured with Navigation payload in L1, L5 and S band in addition to ranging payload in C-band.

Key applications of NavIC are terrestrial, aerial, and maritime navigation, precision agriculture, geodetic surveying, fleet management, location- based services in mobile devices, orbit determination for satellites based services in mobile devices, orbit determination for satellites Internet-of-Things (IoT) based applications, emergency services, and timing services.

This is the 100th launch from SDSC by the ISRO with SLV-E-01, whose director was space scientist and former President A P J Abdul Kalam with the Rohini Technology payload being the first mission to be launched from SDSC, Sriharikota on August 10, 1979.

Since then, the ISRO has conducted 99 launches with the space agency’s trusted workhorse PSLV carrying out 62 launches, followed byGSLV (16), LVM3 (7), ASLV (4), SLV (4), SSLV (3), and test missions such as crew escape system, scramjet engine, and RLV-TD.

Additionally, as many as 537 launches have taken place at the Sounding Rocket Complex in Sriharikota after it became operational on October 9, 1971, with the flight of ‘Rohini-125’, a small sounding rocket.

Sriharikota, the spindle-shaped island in Andhra Pradesh’s Nellore district situated in the backwater of Pulicat Lake and sandwiched by Buckingham Canal on the West and Bay of Bengal on the East,was chosen by the Union Government in 1969 for setting upthe country’s rocket launch station.

ISRO is now building its second launchpad complex in Kulasekarapattinam in the Thoothukudi district in Tamil Nadu exclusively for launching small satellites which is geographically advantageous for the country, while the SDSC complex in Sriharikota is also set to get a third launch pad very soon.

Scientists say the Kulasekarapattinam spaceport will help save fuel as satellites launched from here can directly travel towards south unlike those launched from Sriharikota which fly in the southeast direction after lift-off from the Sathish Dhawan Space Centre to avoid flying over Sri Lanka and takes a sharp manoeuvre towards the South Pole. The spaceport will be operationalised in the next two years.