India to launch first space observatory Astrosat on September 28

ISRO is set to launch India’s first astronomy satellite.

ISRO has announced that the ASTROSAT it has been building and assembling for a while now is ready for launch.

In a statement given to PTI by Director, Public Relations, ISRO, Deviprasad Karnik, all the preparations concerned with the launch has been going on smoothly. India’s Hubble or first astronomy satellite dubbed “Astrosat” has made it the fourth country in the world to have a look out in orbit.

So far, US, Russian Federation and Japan have launched space observatories. The vehicle will place the satellite into a 650km orbit after launching from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Shriharikota.

The diameter of Astrosat’s optical mirror is around 30 cm, compared with 2.4 m in the case of Hubble.

With Astrosat, India will be included in the ranks of countries with such a satellite in space.

In space, Astrosat will be able to observe the sources of UV and X-ray wavelengths at the same time. ASTROSAT will make it possible to measure magnetic fields of neuron stars, understand high-energy processes in binary & extragalactic systems and even search for black hole sources in the galaxy.

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman A S Kiran Kumar said that the impending launch of the Astrosat satellite on September 28 with four American micro satellites is a matter of significance.

Astrosat, initially planned for 2005, has been delayed by a decade, as the scientific community struggled to build with precision the instruments needed for such operations.

Isro’s planetary exploratory group and the Indian Institute of Science have also contributed to the spacecraft, which carries four X-ray payloads, a UV telescope and a charge particle monitor.

“The mission envisages an earth orbiting scientific satellite with payloads capable of simultaneously observing the universe in the visible, ultraviolet and X-ray regions of the electromagnetic spectrum”, an ISRO official said.