As many as 14 rockets will lift off from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota this year, as the Indian Space Research Organisation gears up to launch 32 missions. These rockets will include GSLV Mk III for Chandrayaan-2, which will be the 25th mission from the second launch pad at the spaceport.
In his New Year message, Isro chairman K Sivan said besides the development flights of Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV), activities for Gaganyaan, the human spaceflight, would go in full steam to accomplish the various development and qualification milestones. “The year 2019 promises to be much more challenging to the ISRO community with 32 planned missions (14 launch vehicles, 17 satellites and one tech demo missions),” the chairman said in his message posted on the space agency’s website.
He also said that ISRO was aiming at attaining operational geo-imaging capability through the GISAT series, which will reinstate the microwave remote sensing capability of RISAT. Simultaneously, the payload capability of GSLV and its variants will also be progressively improved.
The year will also see the space agency meeting the country’s high throughput bandwidth requirement of Digital India and also in-flight connectivity with the launch of GSAT-20.
“On the application side, crop production estimation will be enhanced to cover 10 additional crops and also provide vital inputs for water and energy security,” read Sivan’s message.
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