Sriharikota: Chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), has said that the second lunar mission of India is very likely to be launched on January 3, 2019. If successful, the launch of Chandryan-2 will be counted as the first mission in the world to go near the South Pole.
Mr. Sivan was speaking on the sidelines of the successful launch of PSLV C-42 into the orbit and talked about the upcoming launches scheduled in the coming few months. He said, “Chandrayaan-2 is planned for a window from January 3 to February 16, 2019, that we are targeting. It can happen anytime during that window. But we are aiming for the beginning of the window, January 3.”
Talking about the successful launch of the NovaSAR and S1-4 earth observation satellites of UK, Mr. Sivan said, “Today I am extremely happy to announce that PSLV-C42 carrying two customer satellites NovaSAR and S1-4 placed them precisely in orbit. Within the next six months, 10 satellite missions and eight launch vehicle missions would be launched – one every two weeks.”
Reacting over the news so ISRO scientist Nambi Narayan who was recently granted compensation by the Supreme Court after being held in an alleged spying case, Mr. Sivan said, “ISRO isn’t in the picture. The case is only against Kerala government. When it was decided that he (Nambi Narayan) is wrongly arrested, he returned to ISRO.”
On September 14, the Supreme Court had granted compensation of the total amount of Rs. 50 lakh to Mr. Narayanan as he was arrested in an alleged spy scandal in 1994. The Top court observed that Mr. Narayanan’s arrest was not needed and unnecessary.
A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, had also announced the setting up of a special committee which would be supervised by retired Supreme Court judge DK Jain to investigate the role of police officials in Kerala in the arrest of Mr. Narayanan.
The ISRO successfully launched PSLV C-42 into orbit and completed its 44th mission on Sunday evening. The rocket carried two international satellites – Nova SAR and S1-4 from the Sriharikota’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre.
Both the two satellites were developed by Surrey Satellite Technologies Limited (SSTL), United Kingdom and it made a commercial deal with ISRO’s commercial wing Antrix Corporation Limited, Department of Space. Both of the two satellites are meant for earth observation from the space, especially over the oceans.
Both the satellites for the British nation had a weight of 889 kilograms and were launched into a 583 km Sun Synchronous Orbit.
One of those satellites NovaSAR is an S-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite designed to be used in forest mapping, land use, ice cover monitoring, flood, and disaster monitoring. And the other one, S1-4 is a very high-resolution Optical Earth Observation Satellite, used for surveying resources, environment monitoring disaster monitoring and urban management.
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