Mission rediness review for PSLV on Jan 6

Sriharikota, Jan 5: The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C7) will undergo a 'mission readiness' test tomorrow as it is all set to blast off from this tiny island on January ten carrying a payload of four satellites including a recoverable spacecraft.

Stringent safety checks were introduced at every stage this time to ensure a perfect launch.

''The launch time is tentatively fixed at 0923 hrs on January 10 and it will be finalised after the mission readiness review,'' Dr M Annamalai, Director of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SHAR), told a group of visiting journalists from Kerala.

If all the parameters are found satisfactory, the countdown for the launch would begin at 0553 hrs on January eight.

The PSLV-C7 will carry into space India's Remote Sensing satellite 'Cartosat-2'(680 kg) and the Space Capsule Recovery Experiment (SRE) capsule (550 kg), Indonesia's Lapan-Tubsat satellite (56 kg) and Pehuensat of Argentina (six kg).

The launch is considered to be a major milestone for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in view of the presence of SRE that will prove India's entry into an elite class of countries possessing re-entry technology. It will be a technological forerunner to developing reusable vehicle like space shuttle.

Dr B N Suresh, Director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram, said all the preparations for the launch of the eleventh flight of the PSLV were progressing smoothly. ''It will be a multi-mission flight as payloads are put on orbit in four different directions in order to avoid collision,'' he added.

The four stages of the PSLV-C7 have been stacked up in the first launch pad at SHAR, situated 100 km away from Chennai. The four satellites were also married up to the rocket.

The first launch pad is situated a couple of kilometers away from the second one from where the unsuccessful launch of the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicles carried out last year.

''We have now introduced stringent safety measures at every level and all the systems are working very well,'' said Mr N Narayanamoorthy, PSLV project director.

Space Capsule Recovery Experiment project director A Subramonian said the SRE-1 would be a technology demonstrator for achieving the capability of re-entry from space. The SRE was intended to provide a platform for key micro-gravity experiments in space, and demonstrate re-entry technology through a process of 'de-boosting' the space capsule and enabling it to return to the earth's atmosphere, and then parachuting it safely back from space for landing in the sea.

The splashdown has been planned about 140 km off Sriharikota in the Bay of Bengal. The mission sequence for the SRE would be for 12 days, at the end of which it would be brought back to earth.

The SRE has a thermal protection system which prevents it from burning up when it knives into the earth's atmosphere and searing heat is generated.

After re-entry, about five km above the sea level, the three parachutes in the SRE will open up sequentially at predicted altitudes and the SRE will splash down.

Cartosat-2 is the 12th in the Indian Remote Sensing Satellite series, capable of providing scene-specific spot imagery. It would join other six IRS satellites which are in service.

To be placed in a 635 polar sun synchronous orbit, the 680 kg highly agile Cartosat carries a panchromatic camera to provide imagery with a spatial resolution of better than one metre and a swath of 9.6 km. It would revisit a specific area in every four days. The images will be used in preparing maps for planning towns and cities, and at cadastral level.

The LAPAN-Tubsat is a technology demonstrator for earth observation. It is a cooperative venture between Technical University of Berlin and the Indonesian Space Agency LAPAN. The 56 kg satellite carries twO Charge Coupled Device cameras with ground resolution of five m and 200 m respectively. It also carries an experiment for message storage and forward system.

Phehuensat is developed by Argentia School of Engineering, Argentina Association for Space Technology and AMSAT Argentina.

Weighing six kg, it is intended to gain experience for designing more complex missions for educational, technological and scientific fields.

UNI