MUMBAI, DECEMBER 9
A satellite fully designed by the schoolkids from Israel will be launched into space in PSLV rocket from the Satish Dhavan Space Centre, Sriharikota on Wednesday at 3.25 p.m.
The Israeli children are delighted, the reason is the four stage PSLV takes off as golden jubilee flight. The satellite designed entirely by schoolkids will be launched on the 50th flight of the highly-proven PSLV, described as the workhorse of India’s space programme
Duchifat-3, the Israeli student satellite, is an experimental and educational spacecraft developed at the space laboratory of Israel’s Herzliya Science Centre.
It has an onboard camera for earth imaging and an amateur radio transponder which will transmit messages. The launch of Duchifat-3 will mark the strengthening of Indo-Israeli space cooperation.
India has so far launched four satellites from Israel, the first one being the Tech-SAR reconnaissance satellite in 2008. Duchifat-1 was launched by Russia in 2014 and Duchifat-2 by the US in 2017.
Apart from Duchifat-3, the 50th flight of the PSLV on Wednesday will also fly one satellite from Italy, one from Japan, and six from the US.
The main payload for this historic mission will be India’s 628kg radar imaging satellite, Risat-2BR, which has applications in the areas of agriculture, forestry, and disaster management. Whether it has military applications as well is a matter of speculation.
The first launch of the PSLV, on September 20, 1993, failed. Thereafter, of the 49 launches so far, 46 were successful, two were complete failures, and one a partial success.
Some of the significant payloads of PSLV include India’s maiden lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1, launched on October 22, 2008; the country’s first mission to Mars, the Mangalyaan, on November 5, 2013, and the PSLV-C37 on February 15, 2017, when it created a world space record by placing 104 satellites in orbit at one go, sources in ISRO said.
