India has successfully launched 104 satellites from a single rocket, setting a world record. Most of the orbiting hardware was made up of nano-satellites; the smallest weighing just over a kilogram
India has successfully launched 104 satellites from a single rocket, Scientists at India's southern spaceport of Sriharikota applauded as the head of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced that all the satellites had been deployed into orbit on Wednesday.
"My hearty congratulations to the ISRO team for this success," the agency's director Kiran Kumar said to those tracking the progress of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).
Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted his congratulations on the launch and ejection of satellites, which was covered live on national television channels.
The rocket was launched at 9:28 a.m. (0358 UTC), releasing all 104 satellites into orbit about 30 minutes later.
Its main cargo was a 714 kilogram Indian satellite to be used for Earth observation, but the payload also included 103 smaller "nano satellites," the smallest of which weighed only 1.1 kilograms.
Low-cost launches
Almost all the nano satellites come from other countries, including Israel, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates. The majority, 96 in all, came from the United States.
The launch gives India - whose space agency is famed for trimming costs - the record for launching the most satellites at once, leaping ahead of Russia which launched 39 satellites in a single mission in June 2014.
India has developed a reputation for multiple satellite launches in recent years.
Breaking the record marks one further achievement for the ISRO, which sent an unmanned rocket to orbit Mars in 2013 at a cost of just $73 million. That figure is a little over a tenth of the cost of NASA's $671 million Maven Mars mission, and is three-quarters the budget of the Hollywood blockbuster Gravity.
The Mangalyaan space probe entered orbit around Mars in 2014, successfully beaming back pictures of the Red Planet.
In spectacular true color
This incredibly sharp image shows Red Sea coral reefs off the coast of Saudi Arabia. It was captured by Sentinel-2A on June 28, 2015. The quality of the Sentinel images is a vast improvement on previous satellite missions, such as Envisat. The Sentinel-2 mission is for land monitoring. It provides images of vegetation, soil and water cover, inland waterways and coastal areas.
In spectacular false color
This false color image of south Khartoum in Sudan was one of the first from Sentinel-2A, captured five days after it arrived in orbit. In the top right corner you can see a bit of the Blue Nile River. The scattered red blotches along the river banks indicate dense vegetation, which is one of the things the satellite monitors. It's a false color image, as color was added to aid interpretation.
Harbor under threat
This is another great shot from Sentinel-2A, showing Sierra Leone in West Africa. The country's capital, Freetown, is on the peninsula at the bottom of the image. Its economy depends on the natural deep water harbor. But ESA says the estuary is "threatened by a growing population [and] unauthorized housing development," which has caused the removal of many hectares of mangrove vegetation.
rc/jm (AFP, Reuters)
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