– Streak of Successes Continues
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| PSLV-C7 lift-off |
In its tenth flight (PSLV-C7) on January 10, 2007, ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle successfully launched, for the first time, four satellites — India’s 680 kg CARTOSAT-2 and 550 kg Space capsule Recovery Experiment (SRE-1), Indonesia’s 56 kg LAPAN-TUBSAT and Argentina’s 6 kg nano satellite, PEHUENSAT-1 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR (SDSC SHAR), Sriharikota. It was the ninth consecutive success for PSLV.
A special structure called Dual Launch Adapter (DLA) was used in PSLV for the first time to accommodate two primary Indian satellites. All the four satellites were placed precisely in the specified polar orbit at an altitude of 635 km. The complex task of separation of four payloads from the fourth stage of PSLV was accomplished flawlessly.
PSLV-C7 lifted off from SDSC SHAR at 9.23 am with the ignition of the core first stage and four of the six strap-on motors. The remaining two strap-on motors were ignited at 25 sec after lift-off. The important flight events included the separation of the ground-lit strap-on motors, separation of air-lit strap-on motors and the first stage, ignition of the second stage, separation of the payload fairing at about 121 km altitude after the vehicle had cleared the dense atmosphere, second stage separation, third stage ignition, third stage separation, fourth stage ignition and fourth stage cut-off.
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| The passengers – A-CARTOSAT-2, B-DLA containing SRE-1 (not shown), C-LAPAN-TUBSAT & D-PEHUENSAT-1 |
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| Transporation of the first stage nozzle-end segment |