Pradeep's Space Newsletter #8
Second Launch from India, A Launch for NewSpace and a piece of the Moon is back to Earth!
I waited for this edition of the newsletter to let the CMS-01 mission complete.
CMS-01 in orbit!
The PSLV-C50 carried a CMS-01 to a sub-geostationary transfer orbit (sub-GTO). Below is the first tweet from my live tweeting of the launch. It’s been a long time since I have live tweeted a launch.
CMS-01 was earlier called GSAT-12R. The change of names is for ISRO’s new naming convention. It has named it’s remote sensing satellites as EOS for Earth Observation Satellite and it’s geostationary satellites as CMS for Communications and Meteorology Satellites. ISRO has provided no rationale for the renaming of satellites.
PSLV-C50 mission consisted of a PSLV flown in it’s XL configuration. XL stands for Extended Length. It’s 6 strap-on boosters are extended in length. It carries 4 ground-lit boosters and 2 air-lit boosters. CMS-01 was the only payload on board. The PSLV placed the satellite in the intended orbit in 1200 seconds. The intended orbit was orbit is 284 km X 20650 km at 17.86 deg inclination.
This is ISRO’s second launch from Indian soil in 2020 and third launch including one from Kourou on board the Ariane V launch vehicle.
In the post-launch press conference, ISRO’s Chairman, K Sivan announced that PSLV-C51, ISRO’s next launch would carry Anand satellite of Pixxel Space. This would be India’s first private satellite launch. Pixxel Space is a remote sensing satellite builder and data provider.
Sandhya Ramesh wrote for The Print before the launch.
Andrew Jones wrote for SpaceNews.com after the launch.
Space is the space to be in
Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted so.
There is evidence to back up this action. ISRO has setup In-SPACE as a body for authorizing and approving proposals. Earlier proposals sent to ISRO could not be reliably tracked. ISRO has also been posting it’s policy for public comments. It has already posted draft policies for remote sensing and satellite communication. It has since posted a draft policy for a technology transfer policy. More are expected in the coming days. A welcome step from the Government and you can see the appreciation from the NewSpace community here.
Chang’e 5 returns to Earth
In the #7R, we left the Chang’e 5 orbiter+returner in lunar orbit. It then executed a series of maneuvers to return to Earth orbit and threw the returner back to Earth. The returner then executed an “atmospheric skip” procedure to slow down and flew over India, over the Himalayas and landed in Inner Mongolia in China around midnight (IST). I followed the events live on Twitter on a CGTN Periscope.
The weather in Inner Mongolia at the time was quite bad. Reporters spoke of a temperature of -30 degrees Celsius. Helicopters in the air using infrared imagery was the first to spot the returner.
The returner is glowing white as it was hot after flying through Earth’s atmosphere. It is surrounded by snow, which is black in infrared. Watching it live, it almost felt like a light in the darkness. The first creature to get to the returner was a fox.
But, it seemed to be quiet intelligent and stayed away from the hot spacecraft. Then, one guy showed up and setup the camera. But, before we had any good video from the sight, the ground crew had to get to the landing site. The search and retrieval team arriving there was quite a site in infrared. After they came, they cordoned off the area but posted a lot of Chinese flag around the returner.
They also used a lot of cartoons to demonstrate various parts of the mission.
This shows the atmospheric skip that it performed over the Indian Ocean.
Lot of memes on the Chinese social media.
Now, we wait for the science results!