ISRO SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHES GSAT-29 SATELLITE

Indian Space Research Organisation(ISRO)  launched the communication satellite GSAT-29, country’s heaviest satellite, on board its second developmental flight GSLV-Mk III D2(heavy-lift rocket Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle)  from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota

                                                  GSLV MK III
It is a three-stage heavy lift launch vehicle, measuring 43.494 m and weighing 640 tonnes.

The first stage has two boosters with solid propellant, the second is the core with liquid propellant, and the cryogenic engine forms the final stage.With the success of this launch, the developmental phase of the GSLV Mk III vehicle programme will be complete and the vehicle’s operational phase will begin.
                                                     GSAT-29

Weighing 3,423 kg at lift-off, GSAT-29 is the heaviest satellite to be launched from India. With a mission life of 10 years, it is the 33rd communication satellite built by ISRO.

  • It will be placed in a geostationary transfer orbit. At its closest point it will be 190 km above the Earth, and at its farthest it will be 35,975 km above the Earth.
  • GSAT-29 is a multi-beam, multiband communication satellite.
  • The Ku-band and Ka-band payloads are designed to mainly focus on connectivity to the users in the hilly and geographically inaccessible areas, especially those in Jammu & Kashmir and North Eastern regions of India.
  • It also carries a Geo High-Resolution Camera to aid in high-resolution imaging.
  • For the first time, an optical communication payload will be utilised for data transmission at a very high rate.

LEARNING WITH TIMES

ISRO: It was established with it’s headquarter at Bangalore in 1969. It functions under overall control of department of space. K. Sivan; the current Chairman of Space Commission, Secretary, Department of Space, Government of India.

                                                    ORBITS

Different orbits serve different purposes. An orbit is a curved path of a celestial object around another celestial object due to the force of gravity. Orbits are everywhere in our universe. The Moon orbits the Earth, and the Earth orbits the Sun, and the Sun orbits around the center of the galaxy.

The  near polar orbits have an inclination near 90 degrees. This allows the satellite to see virtually every part of the Earth as the Earth rotates underneath it.

Sun-Synchronous orbit; The satellite travels from the north to the south poles as the Earth turns below it.The satellite passes over the same part of the Earth at roughly the same local time each day. These orbits allows a satellite to pass over a section of the Earth at the same time of day.These satellites orbit at an altitude between 700 to 800 km.   When a satellite has a sun-synchronous orbit, it means that it has a constant sun illumination through inclination and altitude. For sun-synchronous orbits, it passes over any given point on Earth’s surface at the same local solar time.Satellites that take pictures of the Earth would work best with bright sunlight.

A geosynchronous orbit is an orbit around the Earth, where the object orbits once per day. A common kind of geosynchronous orbit is called a geostationary orbit, where the object orbits above the same part of the Earth at all times. Geostationary satellites are launched into orbit in the same direction the Earth is spinning. When the satellite is in orbit at a specific altitude, it will exactly match the rotation of the EarthThe Earth actually takes 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.09 seconds to make one full revolution. So this would put the satellite at approximately 35,790 km above the Earth.

This is an extremely useful type of orbit and is used for anything where a satellite needs to send or receive signals from the same part of the Earth all the time. It’s used for cell phone satellites, television satellites, weather satellites, as well as some military satellites.

Cryogenics is the study of the production and behaviour of materials at extremely low temperatures (below -150 degree Centigrade) to lift and place the heavier objects in space. Cryogenic engine makes use of Liquid Oxygen (LOX) and Liquid Hydrogen (LH2) as propellants which liquefy at -183 deg C and -253 deg C respectively.A cryogenic engine provides more force with each kilogram of cryogenic propellant it uses compared to other propellants, such as solid and liquid propellant rocket engines and is more efficient.

0 Comments

Leave a Comment

Login

Welcome! Login in to your account

Remember me Lost your password?

Lost Password