Bengaluru: After a hiatus of nearly seven months, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is finally ready to launch its next space mission. The space agency is preparing to launch its NVS-03 mission — Part of India’s NavIC series of navigational satellites — Senior officials of ISRO said in the first week of September.
The launch window will open in the first week of September, a senior ISRO official told ThePrint.
“NVS-03 is already ready for launch at Sriharikota Spaceport. The deadline will be announced soon, but we are aiming for the first week of September,” the official said.
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“ISRO has had a tough year, but we plan to redeem ourselves with this launch,” the official added.
In a written reply in the Lok Sabha early this month, Jitendra Singh, Union Minister for Science, Technology and Space, also confirmed that NVS-03 is ready for launch. The minister also said that after the third NavIC series, ISRO will also launch its subsequent satellites, NVS-04 and NVS-05, respectively.
The official also confirmed that ISRO will also launch the GISAT-1A or EOS-05 satellite, an advanced geo-imaging technology capable of monitoring Indian territory in real time, within a few weeks after NVS-03.
Dysfunctional NavIC
NavIC, which was intended to be the Indian version of GPS in the US, Glonass in Russia, Galileo in Europe and BeiDou in China, is currently dysfunctional due to aging of satellites and ISRO’s failure to replace them with new ones.
One of the biggest setbacks NavIC faced this year was the “partial failure” of the NVS-02 mission in January last year.
But even before that, NavIC faced multiple hurdles. In 2016, atomic clocks were launched on the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) 1A – the first generation navigation satellite before it was renamed NavIC. — I became dysfunctional.
While the space agency confirmed that the remaining six satellites placed in orbit by then were operational, it acknowledged that hardware problems with the rubidium atomic clocks had been discovered in some of them.
Since then, more satellites have encountered one problem or another.
IRNSS 1H, which was launched on August 31, 2017 to replace 1A, could not be inserted into the desired orbit. According to ISRO, the heat shield protecting the satellite could not be disconnected in time during launch.
In a Parliament reply in March, Singh said that of the 11 satellites launched under NavIC, eight of them were operational. Five of them were capable of transmitting one-way message signals, and three of them were broadcasting navigation signals.
There are no successful launches in 2026
The focus will also be on the launch of NVS-03 as this will be only the second launch this year. The first launch, which took place in January this year, failed to put the satellites into orbit.
“ISRO has had a difficult year, but we have a few launches planned this year. Ascension and descent are part of space operations,” a senior ISRO official said.
(Editing by Akriti Handa)
