Isro set to launch weather satellite INSAT-3DR by month-end

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) is gearing up for the launch of geostationary weather satellite INSAT-3DR sometime by the end of the month, tentatively fixed at 28 August, a top official of the agency said.

Isro will use the geosynchronous satellite launch vehicle (GSLV-MkII) to place the weather satellite INSAT-3DR in a geosynchronus orbit, officials said on Friday.

''The weather satellite INSAT-3DR will be put into orbit by a GSLV rocket August end. Preparations for the launch are going on,'' P Kunhikrishnan, director of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC), told reporters on Sunday.

Preparations are on at the Satish Ddawan Space Centre (SDSC) at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh for the launch of the satellite, which is tentatively slated for 28 August, a senior Isro official said, adding that the satellite was yet to reach the space port.

The satellites normally reach the spaceport a couple of weeks before the launch date.

''With improved shock absorbing aspects during the transit, nowadays Indian satellites are first sent to filling of fuel and then to the clean room. We have avoided one testing stage of the satellite and thereby cutting down the launch time,'' IANS quoted an Isro official as saying.

''However foreign satellites that Isro launches with its PSLV rockets will be tested in full without skipping even the first clean room,'' he added.

In September 2016, Isro will launch ScatSat, a weather monitoring and forecasting satellite, using the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).The Indian satellite will be a co-passenger to an Algerian satellite.

Both the satellites will be put into different orbits. So the fourth stage / engine of the rocket will be switched off after ejecting ScatSat first. Then after a gap of around 30 minutes, the engine will be switched on to place the Algerian satellite into its intended orbit.

Isro made its last successful launch of 20 satellites, including its earth observation Cartosat-2 series, in a single mission on board its workhorse PSLV-C34 from the spaceport of Sriharikota last month.

ISRO chairman AS Kiran Kumar had recently said that the space agency was planning to increase the number of rocket launches from the present eight to 12 a year.

Meanwhile, under the impetus of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the French Space Agency (CNES), space agencies of more than 60 countries have agreed to engage their satellites to coordinate their methods and their data to monitor human-induced greenhouse gas emissions.

Without satellites, the reality of global warming would not have been recognised and the subsequent historic agreement at the United Nations headquarters in New York on 22 April 2016 would not have been signed.

Out of the 50 essential climate variables being monitored today, 26, including rising sea level, sea ice extent and greenhouse gas concentrations in all layers of the atmosphere, can be measured only from space.