India Space Indian Space Program

Nilgiri · Jul 5, 2023

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1676507229607047169

Gessler · Jul 6, 2023

Launch date now fixed for July 14. The assembled rocket is heading to the launch pad:

Nilgiri · Jul 10, 2023

ISRO to transfer SSLV to private sector

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will soon transfer its Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) to the private sector, after conducting two development flights of the rocket that seeks to provide on-demand services to put satellites weighing up to 500 kg in a low-earth orbit. The...

economictimes.indiatimes.com

Gessler · Jul 11, 2023

The hits keep coming...we've opened some sort of a floodgate when we signed the Accords it seems. @Nilgiri

Voyager Space deepens India ties for commercial space station plans

Jason RainbowJuly 10, 2023

Voyager's proposed StarLab station

TAMPA, Fla. — Voyager Space is considering using India’s proposed Gaganyaan crewed spacecraft to serve the commercial space station it aims to be operating by the end of the decade. The Denver-based space technology provider announced a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) July 10 with India to explore using Gaganyaan, among other potential collaborations to deepen ties with the country’s space industry.

The MoU paves the way to other partnerships across exploration, research, and commercial activities, Voyager chief revenue officer Clay Mowry said.

India expects to perform Gaganyaan’s first crewed flight no earlier than 2025 following delays that have pushed out its schedule by at least three years.

The MoU with India is Voyager’s first with a crewed spacecraft provider outside the United States, Mowry told SpaceNews. He said Voyager is working with multiple undisclosed providers to supply crew and cargo services for Starlab, which would use a standard docking system aiming to be compatible with various spacecraft.

“We are targeting our single-launch configuration to be operational in 2028,” he added.

India partnerships

Gaganyaan would launch to low Earth orbit on a version of India’s heavy-lift Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark 3.

Voyager announced a separate MoU July 7 to explore launch and deployment opportunities for small satellites orbited by two smaller Indian rockets: The Small Satellite Launch Vehicle and Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, or SSLV and PLSV.

Voyager’s customers have previously flown payloads on two PLSV missions, according to the company, which said the deal further expands their access to space.

The agreement also enables Voyager to study using space-qualified components from the recently created commercial arm of India’s space agency, covering spacecraft manufacturing, deployment, operations, and other areas of interest. Voyager offers a broad range of space technologies following a series of acquisitions since being founded four years ago, ranging from laser and radio frequency communications systems to mission-data transmitters and cameras.

The company announced its latest acquisition March 13 in a deal for engineering company ZIN Technologies, known for microgravity research equipment that Voyager said would support plans for its Starlab space station.

Under development in partnership with Lockheed Martin, Starlab is one of three commercial concepts in the running to help NASA transition from the aging International Space Station.

In January, Voyager said Airbus is also providing technical design support and expertise for the project, potentially making it easier for European governments to use Starlab.

Voyager’s partnerships in India come as the country relaxes regulatory rules over its commercial space sector and the involvement of foreign businesses.

Voyager Space deepens India ties for commercial space station plans

Voyager Space is considering using India’s proposed Gaganyaan crewed spacecraft to serve the commercial space station it aims to be operating by the end of the decade.

spacenews.com

Nilgiri · Jul 11, 2023

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1678639545292664832

Nilgiri · Jul 13, 2023

Fingers crossed for everything to go well and succesfully.

Gessler · Jul 14, 2023

Just about an hour before launch. Fingers crossed.

Nilgiri · Jul 14, 2023

Gessler said:
Just about an hour before launch. Fingers crossed.

View attachment 59197

Launch was a great success. Wonderful start to the mission so far. Let us hope everything goes to plan en route and at the moon.

They have really improved the landing procedure this time as you know.

Highlights:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1679869001596551169

Full launch release:

Nilgiri · Jul 14, 2023

It looks like Skyroot has found its first international customer:

India's Skyroot signs agreement with French firm to launch satellite constellation

The two Indian and French companies have agreed to study the integration of Skyroot's Vikram launcher into the deployment process of the JAPETUS earth observation constellation.

www.indiatoday.in

Gessler · Jul 14, 2023

Nilgiri said:
Launch was a great success. Wonderful start to the mission so far. Let us hope everything goes to plan en route and at the moon.

They have really improved the landing procedure this time as you know.

Highlights:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1679869001596551169

Full launch release:

This also marks 7 out of 7 successful launches for the LVM3...this is truly turning out to be a reliable launch vehicle, couldn't ask for a better platform for the upcoming human spaceflight missions!

Pics from yesterday's launch:

Gessler · Jul 15, 2023

Powerful NASA-ISRO Earth Observing Satellite Coming Together in India

Jul 14, 2023
By Andrew Wang / Jane J. Lee
Editor: Naomi Hartono
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

Engineers joined the two main components of NISAR – the spacecraft bus and the radar instrument payload – in an ISRO clean room in Bengaluru, India, in June. The payload arrived from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California in March, while the bus was built at the ISRO facility. Credits: VDOS-URSC.

Built on opposite sides of the planet, the NISAR satellite will deepen understanding of climate change, deforestation, glacier melt, volcanoes, earthquakes, and more.

Two major components of the NISAR satellite have been combined to create a single spacecraft in Bengaluru, India. Set to launch in early 2024, NISAR – short for NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar – is being jointly developed by NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation, or ISRO, to track movements of Earth’s land and ice surfaces in extremely fine detail. As NISAR monitors nearly every part of our planet at least once every 12 days, the satellite will also help scientists understand, among other observables, the dynamics of forests, wetlands, and agricultural lands.

About the size of an SUV and partially wrapped in gold-colored thermal blanketing, the satellite’s cylindrical radar instrument payload contains two radar systems. The S-band radar is particularly useful for monitoring crop structure and the roughness of land and ice surfaces, while the L-band instrument can penetrate denser forest canopies to study the woody trunks of trees, among other observables. The wavelengths of the S-band and L-band signals are about 4 inches (10 centimeters) and 10 inches (25 centimeters), respectively, and both sensors can see through clouds and collect data day and night.

The payload took a roundabout journey to get to this point. The S-band radar was built at the Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad in western India, then flown in March 2021 to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where engineers had been developing NISAR’s L-band radar. At JPL, the two systems were fixed to the payload’s barrel-like frame before being flown to the U R Rao Satellite Centre (URSC) in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru in March 2023.

In the meantime, engineers and technicians at URSC, collaborating with teams from JPL, were busy developing the spacecraft’s main body, or bus, which is covered in blue blanketing that protects it during assembly and testing prior to launch. The bus, which includes components and systems developed by both ISRO and JPL, will provide power, navigation, pointing control, and communications for the mission.

A crane is used to align NISAR’s radar instrument payload, seen partially wrapped in gold-colored thermal blanketing, with the satellite’s spacecraft bus, which is inside blue blanketing, in an ISRO clean room in Bengaluru, India, in June.
Credits: VDOS-URSC

Since the radar payload and bus were joined in a URSC clean room in mid-June, NASA and ISRO teams have been working together to route thousands of feet of cabling between them. Still to be attached: the satellite’s solar panels, as well as the drum-shaped, wire-mesh reflector that will unfold from the end of a 30-foot (9-meter) boom. At nearly 40 feet (12 meters) in diameter, the reflector will be largest radar antenna of its kind ever launched into space.

The NISAR satellite is currently undergoing performance testing, to be followed by several rounds of environmental testing to ensure it can withstand the rigors of launch and meet all of its operational requirements once in orbit. Then it will be transported about 220 miles (350 kilometers) eastward to Satish Dhawan Space Centre, where it will be inserted into its launch fairing, mounted atop ISRO’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark II rocket, and sent into low Earth orbit.

More About the Mission

NISAR is an equal collaboration between NASA and ISRO and marks the first time the two agencies have cooperated on hardware development for an Earth-observing mission. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, leads the U.S. component of the project and is providing the mission’s L-band SAR. NASA is also providing the radar reflector antenna, the deployable boom, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and payload data subsystem. URSC, which is leading the ISRO component of the mission, is providing the spacecraft bus, the S-band SAR electronics, the launch vehicle, and associated launch services and satellite mission operations.

To learn more about NISAR, visit: https://nisar.jpl.nasa.gov/

Powerful NASA-ISRO Earth Observing Satellite Coming Together in India

Built on opposite sides of the planet, the NISAR satellite will deepen understanding of climate change, deforestation, glacier melt, volcanoes, earthquakes, and more.

www.nasa.gov