SRIHARIKOTA: On Sunday morning, the Indian heavy lift rocket LVM3 successfully took the 36 satellites of UK-based Network Access Associates Ltd. (OneWeb) to space and began orbiting them.
The 43.5-metre-tall LVM3 rocket, which weighs 643 tonnes, carried 36 satellites, totaling 5,805 kg (about 5.8 tonntonne, into space. The rocket blasted off from the second launch pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at 9 a.m.
Just over 19 minutes into its flight, the LVM3 began to sling the 36 small broadband communication satellites into low earth orbit (LEO). The satellites will be placed into a 450-kilometre circular orbit with an inclination of 87.4 degrees.
Once all the satellites are put into orbit, the total number of foreign satellites launched by India since 1999 will be 422. OneWeb is a joint venture between India Bharti Global and the UK government. The Indian space agency ISRO has codenamed the mission "LVM3-M3/OneWeb India-2 Mission'.
The LVM3 (formerly GSLV-Mk III) is a three-stage rocket, with the first stage fired with liquid fuel, the two strap-on motors powered by solid fuel, the second by liquid fuel, and the third by the cryogenic engine.
The ISRO’s heavy lift rocket has a carrying capacity of 10 tonnes for the LEO and four tonnes for the Geo Transfer Orbit (GTO).
The LVM3 had five consecutively successful missions, including the Chandrayaan-2 mission.
This is OneWeb's final installment of 36 Gen1 satellites. Once all 36 satellites are put into orbit, the UK company, backed by India's Bharti Group, and the UK government will have 618 satellites orbiting in space. OneWeb has 582 satellites now in orbit.
By completing the constellation, OneWeb is taking a pivotal step forward in delivering global coverage, including India, the company said.
The Sunday launch is the 18th for OneWeb.
ISRO's commercial arm, NewSpace India Ltd. (NSIL), has signed a contract with the UK company to launch 72 satellites in two phases for a launch fee of over Rs 1,000 crore, OneWeb Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal had said last October.
The first batch of 36 satellites was launched on October 23, 2022, from the Sriharikota rocket port in Andhra Pradesh with the LVM3 rocket, formerly known as the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle MkIII (GSLV MkIII).
OneWeb Gen-1 satellites belong to the 150 kg class. The constellation comprises 648 individual satellites. Out of those 588 active satellites, equally divided among 12 planes, operate at an altitude of about 1200 km above the Earth's surface, ISRO said.
Each plane is separated in altitude by 4 km to prevent inter-plane collisions.
The payload is a bent-pipe system operating in the Ku and Ka bands. The forward link receives Ka-band signals from the gateway via the satellite Ka antenna. The return link receives Ku-band signals from the user terminals (UTs) via the satellite Ku antenna, ISRO said. (IANS)
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