The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Sunday successfully launched India’s largest LVM3 rocket with 36 satellites onboard from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh. ISRO's heaviest rocket LVM3 belonging to UK-based OneWeb Group was launched at around 9 am.
"LVM3 standing 43.5 metres tall and weighing 643 tonnes lifted off from the second launch pad rocket port carrying OneWeb's final installment of 36 Gen1 satellites," officials said, as per news agency ANI.
This was the second mission for Network Access Associates Limited, United Kingdom (OneWeb Group Company) under a commercial agreement with NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) to launch 72 satellites to Low-Earth Orbits. The first set of 36 satellites was launched in LVM3-M2/OneWeb India-1 mission on October 23, 2022.
At the end of the 24.5-hour countdown, the 43.5-meter-tall rocket blasted off at 9 am from the second launch pad, about 135 km from Chennai.
India's Bharti Enterprises is a major investor in OneWeb group, which is engaged in the implementation of the constellation of low earth satellites.
The launch was the 18th for OneWeb Group company while for ISRO, it would be the second mission in 2023 after the successful launch of SSLV/D2-EOS07 mission undertaken in February.
With today's mission, OneWeb would have 616 satellites in its fleet which would be more than enough to launch global services later this year.
The mission marks OneWeb's second satellite deployment from India, highlighting the collaboration between the United Kingdom and Indian space industries, OneWeb said, according to a PTI report.
Across India, OneWeb would bring secured solutions not only to enterprises but also to towns, villages, municipalities, and schools including the hardest-to-reach areas across the country, the company said.
The first set of satellite separations (comprising four of the 36 satellites) was scheduled to take place around 20 minutes after lift-off. The remaining satellites are expected to be placed into the 450 km circular orbits in some time.
The satellites after being placed into the low-earth orbits would be divided among 12 planes at an altitude of about 1,200 km from Earth's surface. Each plane would be separated at an altitude of 4 km to prevent an inter-plane collision, ISRO said.
This is the sixth flight of LVM3 which was earlier known as the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle MkIII (GSLVMkIII) with a cryogenic upper stage. It had five consecutive missions including the Chandrayaan-2.
(With agency inputs)
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