Sunday, 13 Oct, 2024
By: Yash Gupte
India’s space agency the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) had launched the SSLV rocket that can place lightweight Earth-monitoring satellites on low earth orbits right on demand. But after a few hours of launch, ISRO clarified that the satellite suffered a data loss almost immediately.
India launched its first ever Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) from the first launch pad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh on 7th August 2022. India’s space agency the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) had launched the SSLV rocket that can place lightweight Earth-monitoring satellites on low earth orbits right on demand. But after a few hours of launch, ISRO clarified that the satellite suffered a data loss almost immediately. SSLV-D1 placed the satellites into 356 km x 76 km elliptical orbit instead of 356 km circular orbit and later the ISRO clarified that the satellites are no longer usable. The mechanism put in place to identify a sensor failure did not work and thereby, the launch vehicle failed to initiate a salvage action that would have made deviations.The ground testing of the newly developed solid booster stage (SS1) for SSLV was carried out on 14 March, 2022 and all the propulsion parameters during the test were found satisfactory and were matching with the predictions. The SSLV is designed with a view to make it easy even for the small industry players to be a part of its construction unlike the PSLV and the GSLV. This comes at a time when the American business consulting firm Frost and Sullivan has estimated the small satellite launch services market by 69 billion dollar mark by 2030.
The SSLV is developed to transport objects up to 500 kilogram to a planar orbit of 500 kilometers. A 135 kilogram Earth Observation Satellite named Microsat 2A or EOS-02 was launched into a 350 km low earth orbit as part of the vehicle's current mission. There was also an co-passenger satellite, AzaadSAT, which was to be placed in the low earth orbit (LEO). SSLV is very different as compared to the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). The major issue with the PSLV is that it takes a lot of time for launching small satellites into the orbit making it a costly and time consuming affair. Operating SSLV on smaller and more commercial missions will free up the massively used Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) for bigger missions to space.
The chart below compares SSLV with the existing PSLV.
Source: Indian Space Research Organization
From the above chart it can be noted that the SSLV is very cost effective and time friendly as compared to the PSLV when it comes to the launching of small satellites into the orbit but at the same time the space agency should also be vigilant about the failure of its mission and should work upon a new launch. The project cost of SSLV was just 30 crore as compared to the 130 crore of PSLV. The PSLV can take payloads up to 1750 kg up to 600 kms while the SSLV can carry smaller payloads of 10-500 kg up to 500 kms.
The newly established commercial company of ISRO, New Space India Limited (NSIL) had bsen entrusted with fulfilling industry demand by partnering with the Indian private sector to mass produce SSLVs. For the development project, which includes the creation and qualification of the vehicle systems as well as flight demonstration via three development flights, the government has approved a total expenditure of Rs. 169 Crore (SSLV-D1, SSLV-D2 & SSLV-D3). Dr. Somanath, the new chairman of ISRO, is credited with designing and developing the SSLV while serving as the center's director in Thiruvananthapuram from 2018.Though the partial failure of ISROs SSLV mission has raised doubts over the SSLV's capacity of being a cost effective and attractive alternative to the PSLV, the SSLV tends to make a remarkable footprint in the space industry in the near future.
