NEW DELHI:India on Monday successfully launched multiple satellites from one rocket into two different orbits.
The 371-kg SCATSAT-1 launched within 17 minutes of takeoff aims to study oceans and help in weather forecasting, including cyclone detection. “SCATSAT-1 has been successfully injected in orbit,” the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) said.
The mission was the longest for the polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV C-35) that lifted off from Sriharikota at 9:12am carrying eight satellites. The satellites included three from India, three from Algeria, and one each from Canada and the US. The remaining seven were put into orbit around two hours later.
Both satellites were made by Indian students. Pratham, a 10kg satellite project costing INR15 million, was developed by students of Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai, while the 5.25kg PISAT was made by students of Bengaluru’s PES University. Pratham will study the electron count in space, which will help improve the accuracy of the Global Positioning System in India and also predict tsunamis; while PISAT will take pictures of the earth.
“All the signals that are sent by satellites towards earth interact with a layer of electrons (negatively charged particles) in the atmosphere. This interaction changes the behaviour of these signals, and introduces certain errors in the GPS readings,” said Jhonny Jha, former project manager of Pratham.
“In the case of a tsunami, the earthquake responsible for the tsunami often emits high intensity gravity waves that change the electron count drastically. So when someone tries to measure TEC, the readings will be high which can act as a warning for coastal areas for an impending tsunami,” said Jha.
To share information, Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai has helped set up ground stations to track the satellite at engineering colleges such as the Atharva College of Engineering, Malad. The institute has also collaborated with universities overseas such as the University College London and the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris.
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