The Hindu Business Line : Anna University’s satellite to be put up in space today

Chennai, April 19 Monday will be a red-letter day in the annals of Anna University’s history. If all goes well, a satellite made by the University will be put up in space by the PSLV-C-12 rocket.

The small, 40-kg ANUSAT “will demonstrate technologies related to message store and forward operations”. Travelling in a polar orbit at an altitude of 550 km, the satellite will circle the earth once every 90 minutes.

The main passenger in the PSLV-C-12 will, however, be a somewhat heavier (300 kg) ‘Radar Imaging Satellite (Risat-2), which is meant to enhance disaster management capabilities of the Indian Space Research Organisation.

As far as satellites go, even the Risat is a baby. Indian satellite launch vehicles – rockets – are capable of taking up satellites weighing around 2 tonnes, not just 550 km as Monday’s rocket, but all the way up to a geo synchronous orbit of 36,000 km.

As such, the PSLV-C-12 itself is a stripped down version of the standard PSLVs, which have six strap-on motors hugging the core of the rocket at the bottom like children clutching their mother’s frock. The current one will be a ‘core-only’ configuration and hence will weigh only 230 tonnes. That is as much as 380 Tata Nano cars. The standard PSLV weighs 295 tonnes — 500 Tata Nanos.

The 44-metre tall PSLV (little more than half the height of Qutub Minar) is a “reliable workhorse” that has put several satellites in space. Between 1993 and 2008, the rocket has put 14 Indian and 16 international satellites up in space. (Of course, the foreign satellites were all small ones.)

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