ISRO’s PSLV C55 mission to launch this week

Space agency Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has confirmed that the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) C55 will be launched on April 22. In this mission, satellites from Singapore are being launched commercially.

PSLV C55 is unique because it uses a new rocket integration technique that saves time. It is also the first rocket to be integrated at the new PSLV Integration Facility (PIF) attached to the Satish Dhawan Space Center SHAR at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. The PSLV first and second-stage rocket assembly was completed at the PIF building, while phases three and four integration has been done in the mobile service tower. Notably, for earlier PSLV missions, the entire integration was done at the mobile service tower.

The new approach will help the space agency to do partial integration of the PSLV vehicle even if the first launch pad is engaged with another launch. This will increase the launch frequency.

The space agency launched PSLV C54 mission in November 2022 which carried Oceansat-3, also known as Earth Observation Satellite-6 and eight nanosatellites.

Further, earlier this month, ISRO completed the first unmanned landing process of the Reusable Launch Vehicle Autonomous Landing Mission (RLV-LEX). It is an under-development reusable rocket of which a smaller demonstrator module was used. The original reusable rocket is 1.6 times larger and is expected to play a role in manned space missions in the future.

In March, ISRO’s heaviest payload rocket — LVM3 — carrying 36 OneWeb satellites took off from Sriharikota. This was the second mission for OneWeb Group Company under an agreement with NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), ISRO’s commercial arm, to launch 72 satellites to Low-Earth Orbits.