The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced that final preparations are underway for its scheduled launch of a Singapore customer satellite in an orbit around the planet.
The TeLEOS-2 mission will launch onboard ISRO's workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) on its 55th mission to date at 2:19 pm IST on April 22.
The Singaporean probe is an Earth Observation Satellite, which has been designed to capture round-the-clock, all-weather satellite imagery. The 750-kilogram satellite, developed by ST Engineering, will provide imagery that could be used for hotspot monitoring and haze management, air crash search and rescue operations, and much more.
The PSLV is a third generation launch vehicle indigenously developed by India as well as the first Indian launch vehicle to be equipped with liquid stages. After its first successful launch in October 1994, the vehicle has launched numerous Indian and foreign customer satellites and ‘Chandrayaan-1’ in 2008 and Mars Orbiter Spacecraft in 2013.
PSLV deployed an Earth Observation Satellite (EOS-06) and eight nano-satellites with a lift-off mass of 321 tonnes into orbit in its last mission on November 26, 2022.
The XL variant of PSLV, which will be used during the C-55 mission, has six solid rocket strap-on motors to augment the thrust. The rocket is capable of launching 1,750 kg of payload to Sun-Synchronous Polar Orbits at 600 km altitude and 1,425 kg into Geosynchronous and Geostationary orbits.
This is not the first launch of a Singaporean satellite from India. The Indian space agency launched three Singaporean satellites with the PSLVC-53 mission in June 2022. The spacecraft carried the DS-EO satellite, NeuSAR, a 155 kg satellite, and Scoob-1 of Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.