With Satish Dhawan Space Centre already working at its full capacity and need for increasing frequency of launches, Indian Space Research Organization is all set to get its new satellite launch centre at western coast soon.
With Satish Dhawan Space Centre already working at its full capacity and need for increasing frequency of launches, Indian Space Research Organization is all set to get its new satellite launch centre at western coast soon.
“We have scanned a few sites and decision on the new launch centre is in the final stage. It will be located somewhere on the western coast”, a senior ISRO official told UNI.
The official, however, refused to give any time frame for it, but said that first two flights of SSLV (Small Satellite Launch Vehicle) will take place from the present centre at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh only, while the third will take off from the new centre.
ISRO has already announced that development of SSLV will be completed by mid 2019. Going by this time frame, the second launch centre is expected to be functional by 2020.
SSLV will be able to carry lighter payloads to space, will be cheaper and could be assembled in 72 hours only. This will provide room for more commercial launches.
The official said, ‘We can’t envisage a second centre on the eastern coast. As we try to go south, Sri Lanka will come within 500 km range. In that case, for polar orbit launching we will not get a straight line trajectory as we will need to avoid Sri Lankan air space resulting in reduced load carrying capacity of our vehicle.’
Not divulging the location of probable sites, the official said that the new site needs not to be densely inhabited and at the same time it needs to have good connectivity.
Apart from new launch centre, ISRO is also developing third launch pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre which will be used for recently announced country’s first man-mission Gaganyan. Three astronauts are to be send on this mission. ISRO has said that followed by two unmanned flights, Gaganyan is to be launched by December 2021.