Watch Indian rocket launch 7 satellites to orbit today (Image Credit: Space.com)
An Indian rocket will launch seven satellites to orbit today (July 29), and you can watch the action live.
A Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) is scheduled to lift off from India’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre today at 9 p.m. EDT (0100 GMT and 6:30 a.m. local India time on July 30).
Watch the liftoff live here at Space.com, courtesy of the Indian Space Research Organisation, or directly via ISRO.
Related: Indian rocket sends 2 Singaporean satellites to orbit in ‘textbook launch’
The main payload flying on the 145-foot-tall (44 meters) PSLV tonight is DS-SAR, a 794-pound (360 kilograms) satellite designed to image Earth in radar light. (SAR stands for “synthetic aperture radar.”)
DS-SAR was developed jointly by Singapore’s Defence Science and Technology Agency and the company ST Engineering, according to ISRO.
Six other, smaller satellites will also fly on the rocket as secondary payloads. All of them were developed by Singaporean universities and other organizations in the small but economically powerful island nation. You can learn more about them in ISRO’s launch press kit.
All seven satellites are scheduled to be deployed into low Earth orbit, 332 miles (535 kilometers) above the planet, over a four-minute stretch beginning about 21 minutes after launch, according to ISRO.
After deploying the satellites, the PSLV’s fourth stage will maneuver itself down to a circular orbit with an altitude of about 186 miles (300 km) “to ensure its reduced orbital life,” ISRO officials wrote in the press kit.
Tonight’s launch will be the 58th overall for the PSLV, which can deliver up to 3,860 pounds (1,750 kg) of payload to sun-synchronous polar orbits 370 miles (600 km) high.
