India to launch its own space observatory Astrosat

Bengaluru, Sept 21: It is a breakthrough in Indian Space history! ISRO is scheduled to launch its first Space Observatory Astrosat on September 28. India will then become the fourth country to have a lookout in orbit.

The 1.5 ton satellite will be carried to space by PSLV-30 rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Center at Sriharikota at 10 am. Six cuxtomer satellites will tag along-one(micro) each from Canada and Indonesia, and 4 nano satellites from the US.

Inside sources said,"The mission envisages an earth orbiting scientific satellite with payloads capable of simultaneously observing the universe in the visible, ultraviolet and X-ray regions of the electromagnetic spectrum."

The observatory is likely to study distant stars, dwarfs, planets and planetary motions. However, the main agenda of the mission is to study the massive black hole believed to be existing at the Center of the Milky Way.

The payload development involved the participation of four other institutions-Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics and Raman Research Institute.

The orbit will be placed into a 650 kilometer orbit carrying 4 X-ray payloads, 1 UV telescope, and a charge particle monitor. Two of the payloads have been made in co-ordination with the Canadian Space Agency and University of Leicester, United Kingdom.

So far, US, Russia and Japan have launched space observatories.

OneIndia News