ISRO places 36 satellites on first commercial mission of rocket LVM3-M2

OneWeb Limited is a customer of ISRO’s commercial arm, NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) and a global communications network operating from space, which enables Internet connectivity for governments and businesses. Bharti Enterprises is one of the leading investors of OneWeb.

With this success, ISRO It left behind the anomaly experienced in its August 7 Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) mission, which then rendered the satellites unusable.

According to ISRO, the vehicle carried the heaviest payload along with OneWeb’s 36 satellites, becoming the first Indian rocket with a payload of 5,796 kg.

“LVM3 M2/OneWeb India-1 mission successfully completed. All 36 satellites have been placed in desired orbits. @NSIL_India @OneWeb,” ISRO said in a tweet.

This is the first launch for LVM3-M2 that will place the satellites in low Earth orbit (1,200 km above Earth) as opposed to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO).

All the 36 satellites were put into orbit about 75 minutes after the rocket blasted off from the Andhra Pradesh space station.

ISRO Chairman S Somanath said the celebrations began as LVM3 at the Satish Dhawan Space Center and its first commercial mission has accomplished orbit very precisely.

“Congratulations to the entire Launch Vehicle team for seizing this opportunity and preparing it today for the historic mission. I would also like to thank the OneWeb team for giving us the confidence to host LVM3… We are very hopeful that The next mission will do the same for the remaining 36 satellites of LVM3 contracted by NSIL”, he said.

A 43.5-metre-tall rocket lifted off from the second launch pad of the Satish Dhawan Space Center here at a pre-scheduled time of 12.07 am on Sunday.

The vehicle is also termed as one of the heaviest for its capacity to carry satellites of up to 8,000 kg.

Former ISRO chiefs K Sivan and AS Kiran Kumar and Bharti Enterprises founder-chairman Sunil Mittal among others witnessed the launch from the Mission Control Centre.

Thaddeus Bhaskar, director of the mission, said, “The mission was this team’s demand by the ISRO chairman to carry out the mission in less than three months.”

He said, “Once the requirement was defined, the entire ISRO team rose to the occasion, worked with full vigor. Throughout the program, there was no place to sleep and everything was perfect the first time. was”, he said.

About LVM3-M2

The rocket is a three-stage launch vehicle with two solid propellant S200 strap-ons on its sides and a main stage consisting of an L110 liquid stage and a C25 cryogenic stage.