CHENNAI, Aug 3:
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is planning a GSLV Mission, using its own indigenous cryogenic engine, either in December this year or January next.
The GSLV mission would go on board after two PSLV missions in the next three months, ISRO sources said.
The GSLV mission is to place a communication satellite—GSAT-14 — in the orbit.
Considered as a replacement for Edusat, the Satellite would carry six Ku and six extended C-Band transponders, besides a KA band beacons to carry out studies with regard to rain and atmospheric effects on Ka band satellite communication links in Indian region.
The proposed GSLV Mission would be the first in two years after the ISRO suffered twin set backs in 2010.
On April 15, the flight-testing of the indigenous Cryogenic
Engine and the Stage using GSLV-D3 failed.
The GSLV-D3 vehicle lifted off as planned and the performance of the vehicle was normal up to the end of the second stage.
However, the cryogenic stage did not get ignited and the GSAT-4 Satellite could not be injected into the orbit.
The second set back came on Christmas Day when the GSLV Mission, using a Russian Cryogenic engine, was destroyed about a minute after lift off as the vehicle exploded mid air.
The GSLV-F06 flight, which carried GSAT-5P Satellite, was destroyed 64 seconds after lift off after the destruction command was issued as per the Range Safety norms after the vehicle developed larger errors and subsequently exploded in mid air 53.8 seconds after lift off.
The twin set backs forced ISRO to carry out several ground tests before flight testing it again.
However, ISRO’s GSLV plans received a major boost on May 12 this year when the acceptance test of the indigenous cryogenic engine for the forthcoming mission was conducted successfully for 200 seconds at the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC) test facilities at Mahendragiri.
Buoyed by the success, ISRO decided to go ahead with the GSLV Mission using own cryogenic stage and it was scheduled for December-January.
The GSLV Mission would be preceded by at least two PSLV missions—PSLV-C21 and PSLV-C20 — between September and November.
ISRO was gearing up for a core-alone PSLV-C21 mission for launching two satellites—SPOT-6 (an 800 kg advanced remote sensing built by France) and a Japanese satellite — next month.
While the Japanese satellite had already arrived at India’s spaceport of Sriharikota for pre-launch tests, SPOT-6 was expected to reach soon.
The launch of foreign satellites followed an pact reached between Antrix Corporation, the commercial arm of ISRO and Astrium SAS of France, which had built the satellite.
SPOT-6 would be the heaviest foreign satellite to be launched by ISRO after the 350-kg Italian satellite Agile in 2007.
Since the payload capacity was not that heavy, ISRO would be using the core alone version for the PSLV-C21 mission—without the six strap on motors.
Weather permitting, the PSLV-C20 mission, planned in October/November, was to launch the Indo-French satellite, SARAL.
Though ISRO usually does not plan any missions during October-November, the sources said, weather permitting the PSLV-C20 would go ahead as scheduled. (UNI)
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