Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is gearing up to launch the nation's latest spy satellite RISAT-2BR1 and nine foreign satellites from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh on December 11.
The other nine foreign satellites, which will be blasted off to space along with Indian spy satellite are international customer satellites that are being launched under a commercial arrangement with New Space India Limited (NSIL).
These satellites are — USA's multi-mission Lemur-4 satellites, technology demonstration Tyvak-0129, Earth imaging 1HOPSAT, Israel's remote sensing Duchifat-3, Italy's search and rescue Tyvak-0092, and Japan's QPS-SAR — a radar imaging Earth observation satellite.
The space agency said that all 10 satellites will be sent to space through the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle rocket (PSLV-C48) at 3:25 pm. The rocket will launch from the first launch pad at Sriharikota Space Centre and place RISAT-2BR1, which weighs around 628 kg and has a life of five years, into an orbit of 576 km.
The satellites will be carried by PSLV-QL variant and have four strap-on boosters with a combined propellant load of 48 tonnes. The December 11 flight will be the second space trip for this rocket variant.
The rocket, after 16 minutes of launch, will sling RISAT-2BR1 towards its orbit and start ejecting other nine customer satellites a minute later. This mission is expected to complete in around 21 minutes after placing the last of the customer satellites into orbit. The ISRO has placed 310 foreign satellites into orbit so far.