A new variant of the PSLV featuring four strap-on motors made a successful first flight on 1st April, launching a total of 29 satellites.
India's PSLV launcher successfully injected Emisat and 28 international customer satellites into their designated orbits on 1st April. Emisat, which is based on ISRO's India Mini Satellite-2 (IMS-2) bus platform, is intended for electromagnetic spectrum measurements.
PSLV-C45 lifted off at 09:27 hrs (IST) from the second launch pad of Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR, Sriharikota on its 47th flight. This flight marked the first mission of a new variant of the launch vehicle with four strap-on motors. It follows the previous PSLV mission, in January, when the launcher was flown for the first time with two strap-on motors.
17 minutes and 12 seconds after lift-off, Emisat was successfully injected into the intended 748km sun-synchronous polar orbit.
After the separation of Emisat, the vehicle’s fourth stage engines were restarted twice to place the 28 international customer satellites precisely into a 504km sun-synchronous orbit. The final customer satellite was placed in its designated orbit 1 hour and 55 minutes after lift-off.
About 3 hours after lift-off, the fourth stage (PS4) of the vehicle was moved to a lower, 485km circular orbit after two restarts to establish it as an orbital platform for carrying out experiments with three payloads.
The PS4 payloads are an Automatic Identification System (AIS) from ISRO, an Automatic Packet Repeating System from AMSAT for amateur radio operators, and an Advanced Retarding Potential Analyzer for ionospheric studies from Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology.