Chennai, Aug 31:
Nearly five years after the August 21, 2021 unsuccessful GISAT-1 mission by GSLV-F10 due to a glitch in the third upper cryo stage, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is gearing up for the launch of Earth Observation Satellite (EOS-05), also known as GISAT-1A, and India’s first ever imaging satellite to operate from the Sub-Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO), using the heavy lift launch vehicle GSLV-MkII from the spaceport of Sriharikota, about 110 km from here.
The launch from the Second Launch Pad, is most likely to take place on the early morning of September four at 0255 hrs, though the Space Agency, while confirming the launch mission, however, has not revealed the date of the mission.
The launch will take place from the Second Launch Pad and that preparations are underway for the mission being undertaken after a short gap.
The EOS-05 will be launched by GSLV-F17, the 19th flight of India’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), and the configuration of GSLV-F17 Payload Fairing is 4 m dia Ogive (composite) version.
According to reports, the launch will take place on September 4 and the GSLV-F17/EOS-05 mission was scheduled at 0255 hrs early in the morning, lighting up the night skies.
The three-stage–with the indigenous cryogenic upperstage–51.7 m tall GSLV-F17, with a lift off mass of 420.5 tonnes will place EOS-05 satellite into a Sub-Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (Sub- GTO). Launch is planned from the Second Launch Pad (SLP) at Satish Dhawan Space Centre, SHAR.
After the lift off, the 2,367 kg spacecraft will be injected into the Sub-GTO with perigee of 170 km and an apogee of 28,934 km with an inclination of about 19.28 Deg (with plus or minus one) to the equator.
“EOS-05 is a state-of-the-art Earth observation spacecraft. It is India’s first ever imaging satellite from Geosynchronous orbit”, it said.
EOS-05 is designed to capture detailed images of the Earth and provide data for monitoring and other applications that require regular observation of the land and environment. It aims to improve the existing remote sensing capabilities and GISATs are designed to image in multi-spectral and hyper-spectral bands to provide near real-time pictures of large areas of the country, under cloud-free conditions, at frequent intervals which is, selected field image in every 5 minutes and entire Indian landmass image every 30 minutes at 42 metres (138 ft) spatial resolution.
GSLV-F17 is the 19th flight of India’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) and the configuration of GSLV-F17 Payload Fairing is 4 m dia ogive (composite) version.
The satellite was integrated with the launch vehicle which was already taken to the SLP for carrying out pre-launch testing and madatory checks.
Once the launch date was finalised, countdown would start during which propellant filling operations would take place in the vehicle ahead of the lift off.
EOS-05 is a replacement for GISAT-1A, which was lost in an unsuccessful mission in 2021 and the proposed mission will be closely watched following two successive PSLV mission failures in 2025 and early 2026.