COUNTDOWN START FOR GSLV-D6:
The Indian Space Research Organisation began a 29-hour pre-noon countdown on Wednesday for the launch of GSLV-D6 satellite launcher.
The launch vehicle is powered by the indigenously developed upper cryogenic stage and will be flown at 4.52 p.m. on August 27 from Sriharikota in coastal Andhra Pradesh.
It will put the 2,117-kg GSAT-6 communication satellite into space. The spacecraft will be gradually moved and finally positioned over the country at 83 degrees East longitude in the coming days.
The GSLV is a medium-lift launcher that can put two-tonne satellites into an initial or geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO) of up to 36,000 km from Earth. The last GSLV was flown in January 2014.
ISRO Chairman A.S.Kiran Kumar, who is also Secretary, Department of Space, said the upcoming event was doubly significant. The ninth GSLV launch, for whose success he said ISRO has taken all necessary actions, would take the 20-year-old GSLV programme almost to fruition and regularise its use.
From the satellite point of view, he said GSAT-6 would try out quite a few novel technologies that very few satellite players have tried out, such as the large, unfurlable antenna of a diameter of six metres.
ISRO's other launch vehicle, the light-lift PSLV, is a big success after 30 flights in 22 years, lifting Indian spacecraft to Moon and Mars apart from several Earth observation satellites, a national communications satellite and 45 small foreign satellites.