First Post shows how NASA’s not the only one with big space news today. India has just launched their own space observatory from Sriharikota spaceport:
PSLV-C30 is carrying Astrosat, along with six other co-passengers, one satellite each from Indonesia and Canada, and four nanosatellites from the US. With the successful launch of Astrosat, India gained an entry into the select club of nations having its own space observatory after the US, Japan, Russia and Europe.
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While ASTROSAT with a five-year life span weighed 1,513 kg, the six foreign satellites (four from the US and one each from Indonesia and Canada) together weighed 118 kg. According to an official of Antrix Corporation – the commercial arm of India Space Research Organisation (ISRO) – a deal has been signed to put into orbit nine American nano/microsatellites by the end of 2016.
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Just over 22 minutes into the flight, the rocket slug ASTROSAT at an altitude of 650 km above the earth.
Soon after, six other satellites were put into orbit and the whole mission ended in just over 25 minutes.
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According to a report in the IANS, Astronat is not India’s ‘Hubble’. The Hubble owned and launched by the US in 1990 is 10 times heavier than the Astrosat and is said to cost $2.5 billion, officials told IANS.
While the Hubble space telescope is still working now, India’s ASTROSAT’s life span is five years.
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One of the unique features of Astrosat mission is that it enables the simultaneous multi-wavelength observations of various astronomical objects with a single satellite, ISRO said.
Astrosat will observe the universe in optical, ultraviolet, low and high energy X-ray regions of the electromagnetic spectrum whereas most other scientific satellites are capable of observing a narrow range of wavelength band.…
Isro said the scientific objectives of Astrosat mission are to understand high-energy processes in binary star systems containing neutron stars and black holes, to estimate magnetic fields of neutron stars and to study star birth regions and high energy processes in star systems lying beyond our galaxy.
The mission is also to detect new briefly bright X-ray sources in the sky and to perform a limited deep field survey of the universe in the ultraviolet region.