New Year Another Landmark : ISRO Fire Fourth Stage of PSLV-C58 Twice To Hold Scientific Experiments

Picture : ANI / X

ISRO has successfully did a maneuvering experiment by firing the fourth stage of a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle rocket twice to conduct scientific experiments.

After the 44.4-meter-tall PSLV rocket lifted off from the first launch pad at 9.10 am on Monday, it placed the primary satellite XPoSat into the desired orbit after 21 minutes of flight as intended.

Later, scientists at the Bengaluru-headquartered space agency fired the fourth stage of the PSLV rocket twice to reduce the altitude from 650 km to 350 km to conduct the scientific experiment in which 10 other payloads of various ISRO centres would be operational in the Low Earth Orbits under the PSLV Orbital Experimental Module-3 (POEM) experiment.

ISRO Chairman S Somnath addressing media quoted by ANI said , “2024 is going to be the year for Gaganyaan readiness…Along with that, we will have a helicopter-based drop test to prove the Parachute systems, there will be multiple drop tests. We also will have many hundreds of valuation tests. So it is going to be a Gaganyaan year. Along with that, we are going to have launches of GSLV..”

The rocket used for today’s successful mission was the PSLV-DL variant, which has a lift-off mass of 260 tonnes. The fourth stage is configured as a 3-axis stabilized Orbital platform for conducting experiments.

The space agency conducted a similar scientific experiment using POEM-2 in the PSLV-C55 mission in April 2023.

The electrical power requirements of the fourth stage orbital platform are catered by Flexible Solar Panel in conjunction with 50 Ah Li-ion battery.

The orbital platform (PS4) consists of avionic systems to take care of navigation, guidance, control and telecommands and orbital platform altitude control systems to cater to the control to test the payloads, ISRO said.

Among the 10 payloads are: Radiation Shielding Experiment Module by TakeMe2Space, Women Engineered Satellite by LBS Institute of Technology for Women, BeliefSat (an amateur radio satellite) built by K J Somaiya Institute of Technology, Green Impulse Transmitter by Inspecity Space Labs Pvt Ltd, LEATTD — Launching Expeditions for Aspiring Technologies Technology Demonstrator by Dhruva Space Pvt Ltd.

RUDRA 0.3HPGP and ARKA 200 developed by Bellatrix Aerospace Pvt Ltd, Dust Experiment (DEX) built by PRL, ISRO and Fuel Cell Power System and Si based High Energy cell built by Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre are the others.