BENGALURU, Aug 29:
When the eighth satellite of the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS1H) takes to the sky on August 31 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will be heralding the start of private sector Assembly and testing of satellites.
This would be a giant leap for ISRO shifting to total integration of satellite assembly and testing from procuring components, sub- systems and systems from the private sector.
The spacecraft weighing 1425 kg and similar to seven other IRNSS series of satellites now perched atop PSLV-C39, the XL version of PSLV equipped with six strap on boosters has been totally assembled, tested and validated for launch by a team of 70 engineers and technicians from a consortium of private sector companies led by Alpha Design Technologies over the last six months.
The other companies included three from Bengaluru and one each from Mysuru and Hyderabad.
ISRO, on its bid to fast track with around a dozen spacecraft launches planned in a year, decided to take the assistance of the private sector and IRNSS-1H is the first to be realised.
Though, according to senior ISRO officials only 25 per cent of the work had been realised by the private sector, moving forward their contribution could be as high as 90 per cent in the next launch of IRNSS-1I scheduled for April next year.
Alpha Design Technologies, Chairman, Col H S Shankar talking to UNI said it would be a pride moment for his company to take up this gigantic task that involved utmost precision and topset skills.
”It was really hand holding by ISRO technocrats as our engineers and technicians assembled the components and systems under the guidance of ISRO scientists”.
Col Shankar said ISRO has sent out proposals for building more communication and remote sensing satellites and his company hoped to bag some more orders especially with the skill sets and expertise it had earned through the first project.
Nearly 66 of its engineers and technicians were involved in the team that built the first spacecraft and now engaged in the second project.
PSLV C39, in the 41st flight of the workhorse, Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle would lift off at 1859 hours on August 31 to put the navigational satellite into an elliptical sub geosynchronous transfer orbit.
The launch would take place from the second launchpad of SDSC. The 44,4 metre tall launch vehicle has a lift off mass of 321 tonnes and had been used for other important missions in the past including the Mars Orbitor, ASTROSAT, RISAT-1 and GSAT 12. In February 2017 this version of the launch vehicle was used to hurl 104 satellites into space on a single mission.
Though IRNSS series had originally intended to consist of only seven satellites, ISRO had planned to go for two more spare spacecraft in view of the failure of the Rubidium atomic clocks. The satellite carried two types of payloads, navigation payload and ranging payload.
The navigation component would transmit navigation service signals to users using L5 band and S band. Highly accurate atomic clocks were part of the navigation payload.
The ranging payload consisting of a C band transponder facilitate accurate determination of the range of the satellite. The satellite also carried Corner Cube Retro Reflectors for laser ranging.
The first satellite in the IRNSS Constellation IRNSS1A was launched on July 1, 2013, followed by two satellites in 2014, one in 2015 and three last year with the last one IRNSS1G launched in April last year. (UNI)
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