INDIA LAUNCHES RECORD-BREAKING 104 SATELLITE ON A SINGLE ROCKET. 

On 15th Feb, a four-stage Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle will blast off from India’s southern spaceport with 104 satellites on board. Should all go well, the Indian Space Research Organization will establish a new satellite delivery record for a single mission—and by a long shot.

The previous record is held by Russia, which delivered 37 satellites into orbit during a single mission back in 2014. The NASA record is 29, which it accomplished in 2013, and the previous Indian record is 20 satellites in one go, which it set last year. With its planned 104-satellite launch, India’s frugal space agency is set to make a statement as it continues to weave its way into the international space scene.

The launch was scheduled for 9:28 local time at the Sriharikota spaceport. At the top of the 144-foot-tall PSLV rocket are 104 individual satellites, including an Indian-built, Earth observing Cartosat -2 Series Satellite weighing 1,574 pounds (714 kg), and 103 nano satellites totaling 1,463 (664 kg). In total, the rocket will deliver 3,038 pounds (1,378 kg) worth of satellites into Low Earth Orbit (LEO). This rocket is capable of delivering 3,860 pounds of payload to LEO, so it’ll be carrying nearly 80 percent of its total payload capacity. This mission will mark the PSLV’s 39th trip to space, in what is turning out to be a dependable, workhorse rocket for ISRO.

In terms of who owns and operates the nano satellites, Israel, Kazakhstan, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates each have one, India has two, and the United States has 96. ISRO charges a handsome fee for these deliveries, which, given the growing market for mobile phones, internet, and other satellite-dependent industries, is becoming a lucrative business.

Needless to say, getting 104 satellites into orbit—67 more than the previous record—won’t be easy. “All the satellites will be put in the same orbit, which poses a different challenge,” noted ISRO chairman A.S. Kiran Kumar in a statement, adding that no maneuvering will be done during the mission. Once these satellites are dispatched, they’ll be on their own.

With this mission, ISRO continues to break new ground, especially in terms of its ability to plan and deploy low-cost missions. In 2013,the space agency sent a satellite to Mars at a cost of $73 million, which is about $600 million less than a similar NASA mission to the Red Planet. Looking ahead, India’s space agency hopes to visit Jupiter and Venus.







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COPYRIGHT © 2017|CREATED BY:MD SAHIL KHAN

NASA DISCOVERED EARTH HAS A SECOND MOON.

NASA has declared that Earth appears to have a second moon that has been orbiting around our planet for nearly a century.
This second moon doesn’t quite resemble the one we’re used to seeing in the starry night sky, however. Actually an asteroid, it has been discovered in an orbit around the sun that keeps it as a constant companion of Earth, and will continue to do so for centuries.
This new asteroid, called 2016 HO3 and, is too distant to be considered a true satellite of our planet, but is the best and most stable example of a near-Earth companion we’ve yet to come across.

“Since 2016 HO3 loops around our planet, but never ventures very far away as we both go around the sun, we refer to it as a quasi-satellite of Earth,” explained Paul Chodas, manager of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object (NEO) Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “One other asteroid — 2003 YN107 — followed a similar orbital pattern for a while over 10 years ago, but it has since departed our vicinity. This new asteroid is much more locked onto us. Our calculations indicate 2016 HO3 has been a stable quasi-satellite of Earth for almost a century, and it will continue to follow this pattern as Earth’s companion for centuries to come”



This second “moon,” discovered by the Pan-STARRS 1 asteroid survey telescope located in Haleakala, Hawaii, is tilted at eight degrees, which is considered to be highly elliptical. This makes it able to travel within the ranges of 38 to 100 times the distance of our “first moon.”

The asteroid makes its way around the sun for 365.93 days, slightly longer than Earth’s 365.24. It spans about 40 meters across and is about 100 meters wide. Expected to never get closer than about 14 million kilometers from Earth, scientists believe 2016 HO3 will never stray off its course more than 40 million kilometers.




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