Cosmic Penguin
Geek Penguin in GTO
Navigation satellites seems to be the latest "must have" gadgets for space-fairing nations around the world. The US is now gradually replacing its 15+ years old GPS satellites, the Russians have just re-complete their constellation, the Europeans are finally putting their construction of the Galileo constellation into full swing, the Chinese launched a dozen of them over the last 3 years and will launch another 20+ by 2020, and even the Japanese are making a 3-satellite GPS augment system.
Being the "sixth space power" of the world (or at least they are trying to be), it would not be surprising that the Indians are building a 7 satellite regional navigation satellite system. And the first of them is now ready for launch.
The launch is currently scheduled at 18:11 UTC (11:41 pm local) from the main Indian spaceport at Sriharikota, near the southern city of Chennai.
The 1425 kg satellite houses atomic clocks (apparently built in house) that will beam navigation signals compatible with the American GPS system for added positioning accuracy across southern Asia - once the whole system has been completed. This first satellite will be eventually deployed in an inclined geostationary orbit 29 degrees off the equator plane - although the deployment orbit is a rather weird 284 * 20650 km * 17.86 degrees - constrained by ground stations, rocket drop zones and rocket capability.
Today's launch vehicle, the PSLV (one of the two main Indian rockets today) has a rather weird design of having solid motors for the first and third stages and liquid propulsion on the second and fourth stages, not exactly a common design. This launch uses the XL variant with six lengthened solid boosters compared to the standard version.
There will be a webcast at webcast.gov.in/live starting at ~18:00 UTC.
Photos and videos on the various satellites coming soon! In the meantime:
http://www.isro.org/pslv-c22/pdf/pslv-c22-brochure.pdf
http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/irnss.htm
http://navipedia.org/index.php/IRNSS
Being the "sixth space power" of the world (or at least they are trying to be), it would not be surprising that the Indians are building a 7 satellite regional navigation satellite system. And the first of them is now ready for launch.
The launch is currently scheduled at 18:11 UTC (11:41 pm local) from the main Indian spaceport at Sriharikota, near the southern city of Chennai.
The 1425 kg satellite houses atomic clocks (apparently built in house) that will beam navigation signals compatible with the American GPS system for added positioning accuracy across southern Asia - once the whole system has been completed. This first satellite will be eventually deployed in an inclined geostationary orbit 29 degrees off the equator plane - although the deployment orbit is a rather weird 284 * 20650 km * 17.86 degrees - constrained by ground stations, rocket drop zones and rocket capability.
Today's launch vehicle, the PSLV (one of the two main Indian rockets today) has a rather weird design of having solid motors for the first and third stages and liquid propulsion on the second and fourth stages, not exactly a common design. This launch uses the XL variant with six lengthened solid boosters compared to the standard version.
There will be a webcast at webcast.gov.in/live starting at ~18:00 UTC.
Photos and videos on the various satellites coming soon! In the meantime:
http://www.isro.org/pslv-c22/pdf/pslv-c22-brochure.pdf
http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/irnss.htm
http://navipedia.org/index.php/IRNSS
