India’s ISRO to launch six satellites from Singapore

India’s workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, in its 32nd flight (PSLV-C29) tomorrow, will take off from the spaceport at Sriharikota with six satellites of Singapore on board tomorrow evening.

Indian Space Research Organisation’s PSLV rocket will Wednesday launch six Singaporean satellites which would help the city-state gather information on disaster monitoring and urban planning.

The 59-hour-countdown for the of PSLV-C29/TeLEOS-1 Mission began at 7am yesterday and was progressing normally, ISRO said.

The space agency’s Mission Readiness Review committee and the Launch Authorisation Board gave the green signal for the December 16, 6.00 p.m. launch.

The primary satellite TeLEOS-1 is Singapore’s first commercial near equatorial orbit earth observation satellite and is made by electronics manufacturing company ST Electronics.

“The rocket is expected to blast off from the Sriharikota rocket port at 6pm on 16 December”. The Indian rocket will be carrying six satellites all from Singapore.

Kent Ridge-1 is a 78-kg microsatellite with a medium resolution VNIR Hypersepectral camera (GSD 44m) and short wave infrared (SWIR) Hyperspectral camera (GSD 110m). This is ISRO’s sixth exclusive commercial launch. In November, a communication satellite – GSAT-15 – using the Ariane rocket of the European space agency was launched taking the total in 2015 to 21 (17 foreign, 4 Indian).

ISRO will be flying a “core alone” variant of the PSLV, which will not have a strap on its boosters. The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle PSLV-C29 with the payloads on-board is set to take off at 6 pm today and insert them into near-earth orbits from about 20 minutes after the ignition.

The Dec 16 launch comes four years after Singapore put its first home-grown micro-satellite in space.