The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)’s most sophisticated communications satellite, which will provide broadband services in remote areas and in-flight Internet in passenger aircraft, set off for its 34-minute journey into outer space onboard Elon Musk-owned SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket early Tuesday.
With a “Go Falcon. Go GSAT-20” cheer, Falcon 9 carrying GSAT N-2 – also called GSAT 20 – lifted off at 12.01 am from Space Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral in Florida.
“Hoping to see the launch go well. And all the best to the team,” ISRO Chairman S Somanath said in a recorded message.
The 4,700 kg fully satellite was too heavy for Indian rockets to carry, hence the foreign commercial launch.
The launch pad has been hired by SpaceX from the US’ Space Force, a special branch of the country’s armed forces that was created in 2019 to secure its space assets. The mission life of GSAT-N2 is 14 years.
This is the first time that ISRO is launching a satellite on a SpaceX rocket through its commercial arm New Space India Limited (NSIL). This is also the first time ISRO has built a satellite that only uses the advanced Ka band frequency – a range of radio frequencies between 27 and 40 gigahertz (GHz), which enables the satellite to have higher bandwidth.
Falcon 9 is a partially reusable rocket and SpaceX asserts “this will be the 19th flight for the Falcon 9 first stage booster supporting this mission. After stage separation, the first stage will land on a drone ship, which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.”
After the satellite is placed in orbit, India’s Master Control Facility a part of ISRO at Hassan will take control of the satellite and then raise the satellite to its final home 36,000 kilometres above India.
So far, Falcon 9 has been part of 395 launches and has faced just four setbacks, achieving a remarkable success rate of 99%. Experts say that a dedicated launch of a Falcon 9 rocket costs about $70 million on average.
