Opinion After year of successes, ISRO set for big leaps
The upcoming missions, too, are all meant to be special in one way or another, for the rocket or the satellites. The ISRO is targeting at least six more launches before March next year. If that happens, it would be the busiest three-month period in its history.
The most keenly awaited of these is, of course, the first of the three planned uncrewed flights of the Gaganyaan human spaceflight programme, which is supposed to carry a humanoid robot. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) closed out the year with the successful launch of the LVM3-M6 mission in which it deployed a 6,100-kg commercial satellite, Bluebird Block-2, into low-earth orbit. It was the heaviest payload carried by an Indian rocket. Commercial satellite launches, even from other countries, have become routine for the ISRO, having put as many as 434 foreign satellites into space till now belonging to 34 different countries. The important thing about Wednesday’s launch, however, was the demonstration of yet another new capability by the ISRO, to launch very heavy satellites, weighing six tonnes or more. Over the last few years, each of ISRO’s launches has involved the demonstration of a new technology or capability. Individually, they might only represent incremental progress, but together they show the steady evolution of the ISRO into one of the world’s most powerful space agencies.
At the start of the year, the ISRO demonstrated its ability to dock and undock two satellites in space in the SpaDeX mission, an ability that is vital to its ambitions to set up a space station of its own and send more sophisticated lunar and other missions. That was followed by the long-awaited NISAR mission in July, the first of its kind, a joint India-US space mission, in which the satellite was a novelty. It was a unique satellite that carried two Synthetic Aperture Radars of different frequencies designed to work together to produce the most detailed images of Earth ever captured from space. Then came the LVM3-M5 mission in November in which the ISRO placed the 4,400-kg CMS-03 satellite to geosynchronous orbit. It was the heaviest payload that the ISRO has put in the faraway orbit. So the last two launches have been about demonstrating the capability to carry very heavy satellites, to the low-earth orbit or even the geosynchronous orbit.
The upcoming missions, too, are all meant to be special in one way or another, for the rocket or the satellites. The ISRO is targeting at least six more launches before March next year. If that happens, it would be the busiest three-month period in its history. The most keenly awaited of these is, of course, the first of the three planned uncrewed flights of the Gaganyaan human spaceflight programme, which is supposed to carry a humanoid robot.
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