India on Wednesday crossed the mark of launching more than 300 foreign satellites into the orbitisr with the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle-XL (PSLV-XL) successfully putting put 13 nano satellites from the United States into the orbit.
The American satellites are just piggy backing on the PSLV-XL’s main load — Cartosat-3 (India’s advanced earth observation satellite). With today’s launch, the exact number of foreign satellites stood at 310.
The Indian Space research organisation has launched satellites of about 33 countries till now. It was in the 1990s that ISRO was engaged in placing foreign satellites into the orbit.
The achievement of launching 310 foreign satellites was got in the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle’s 49th flight. Lifting off from the from the Second Launch Pad at Sriharikota, PSLV-C47 successfully injected Cartosat-3 into a sun synchronous orbit of 509 km and followed by placing the 13 nanosatellites into their intended orbits.
ISRO entered commercial launch services by launching DLR-TUBSAT of Germany and KITSAT-3 of Republic of Korea along with IRS-P4 onboard PSLV-C2 on May 26, 1999. Satellites of countries such as Algeria, Austria, Argentina, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Canada, France, Israel, Indonesia, Japan, Italy, US, The Netherlands, Singapore, Switzerland and United Kingdom have been launched by PSLV.
