Deepawali of 2022 has been one of the most celebratory ones in the last few decades. India beat Pakistan in a nerve wrecking match. Shopping during Diwali announced the arrival of the Indian economy and finally an Indian-origin proud Hindu is guiding Winston Churchill’s nation. Amongst all this, ISRO’s celebration got overshadowed. The organisation literally kicked off the festivity by launching satellites.
ISRO creates history
ISRO has successfully sent 36 satellites in space. These satellites are owned by a London-based company called OneWeb. The company, having 30 per cent of ownership by Bharti Airtel, had contracted ISRO for launching 72 satellites in total. Half of them were launched from Satish Dhawan spaceport in Andhra Pradesh at 00:07 on 23rd October.
The Remaining 36 satellites will be launched by ISRO in 2023. According to the deal, ISRO will receive Rs 1,000 crore for its launches. ISRO is achieving these seemingly miraculous feats through its commercial arm NewSpace India Limited (NSIL). In 2019, NSIL was established to transfer ISRO’s legacy of technical efficiency to the private sector. NSIL’s establishment came on the back of ISRO having launched 345 foreign satellites in 20 years.
OneWeb wants to flood orbits with its satellites
NSIL’s trust factor can be gauged from the fact that OneWeb is currently competing with Starlink. Despite that it entrusted ISRO, a relatively new entrant in the competition, with the launch. OneWeb is currently on a mission mode to flood Earth’s orbit with its own communication satellites. It wants to deliver high-speed, low-latency connectivity to the Earth. For this purpose, the Company has planned to establish 648 satellites in Lower Earth Orbits. With ISRO’s latest launch, it has achieved 70 per cent of its target.
The 36th satellite sent above by ISRO became 462nd one in the constellation of 648 satellites. OneWeb expects that it will achieve its target of establishing all satellites by the end of 2023. Apparently, even problems arising due to the Ukraine-Russia crisis won’t be affecting it.
In March this year, Russian agency Roscosmos had refused to execute the deal under which the Russian state owned corporation was to send its satellites in space through Soyuz rockets. Then OneWeb contacted Elon Musk’s SpaceX and India’s NSIL for the purpose.
GSLV did the job
While there was less doubt about the capabilities of SpaceX to execute the mission, India’s NSIL was under the radar of doubt. Traditionally, India has largely relied on Polar Satellite Launch Vehicles (PSLVs) to send rockets into space. The problem with it was that we could not launch heavier rockets in PSLVs. We used to depend on foreign countries for this purpose.
We had a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), but even that was not sufficient. In the last one decade, ISRO worked towards increasing their efficiencies. By August 2021, GSLV had made only 14 launches, out of which only 8 were fully successful. One of them was the Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft.
Chandrayaan-2 launched via an updated version of GSLV called GSLV-MK-III-M1. The M2 version of GSLV-MK-III came up with increased efficiency as it now became possible for GSLV to put satellites weighing 6 tonnes in lower Earth Orbit. Additionally, GSLV-MK-III can also place geo-stationary satellites weighing 4 tonnes in Geostationary transfer orbit.
GSLV-MK-III has been the most successful version of all GSLVs ever launched. It has gifted ISRO with 4 successful launches. It is a 3-stage vehicle. In the first stage, it is filled with liquid fuel with 2 strap-on motors powered by solid fuel. Second stage also involves liquid fuel, while the 3rd one involves a cryogenic engine. To mark it different from earlier and less successful versions of GSLVs, ISRO has named it as Launch Vehicle Mark-3 (LMV3). LMV3 will also be used for launching Chandrayaan 3 in 2023.
Considering the low cost, high efficiency and increased reliability, it was no brainer for OneWeb to choose NSIL. The latest launch will bring more players to India’s commercial space market. Incidentally, the competition is being created by space run enterprises, which is unprecedented in the history of politically independent India.
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