ISRO successfully launches PSLV-C59 rocket with European Space Agency’s Proba-3 satellites

After being rescheduled for a day due to an anomaly detected, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Thursday successfully launched the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Proba-3 mission aboard the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV)-C59 rocket. The vehicle took off with a powerful roar, precisely at 4.04 p.m. from the first launch pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, the home to several rocket launches in India.

“The PSLV-C59/PROBA-3 mission is successfully accomplished. The spacecraft has been placed in the right orbit,” ISRO Chairman S. Somanath said. ISRO said the mission had successfully achieved its launch objectives, deploying ESA’s satellites into their designated orbit with precision.

Josef Aschbacher, Director General of the ESA, said: “The latest member of ESA’s family of in-orbit demonstration missions, Proba-3 comprises two spacecraft launched together which, once safely in orbit, will separate to begin performing precise formation flying... Almost instantaneously after separation, Yatharagga station in Australia started to receive the spacecraft’s signal. Telemetry is flowing to ESA’s mission control centre in Belgium,” he added.

Artificial solar eclipses

The ESA on its site mentioned: “A pair of spacecraft were launched together today from India with the potential to change the nature of future space missions. ESA’s twin Proba-3 platforms will perform precise formation flying down to a single millimetre, as if they were one single giant spacecraft. To demonstrate their degree of control, the pair will produce artificial solar eclipses in orbit, giving prolonged views of the Sun’s ghostly surrounding atmosphere, the corona.”

According to the ESA, stacked together, the two satellites separated from their upper stage about 18 minutes after launch.  The pair will remain attached together while initial commissioning takes place, overseen from mission control at the European Space Security and Education Centre, in Redu Belgium.

Proba-3 mission manager Damien Galano said, “Today’s liftoff has been something all of us in ESA’s Proba-3 team and our industrial and scientific partners have been looking forward to for a long time.” Details shared by the ESA show that if Proba-3’s initial commissioning phase goes to plan then the spacecraft pair will be separated early in the new year to begin their individual check-outs. The operational phase of the mission, including the first observations of the corona through active formation flying, should begin in about four months. 

The PSLV-C59/PROBA-3 Mission is the 61st flight of PSLV and the 26th using PSLV-XL configuration, carrying ESA’s PROBA-3 (Project for Onboard Autonomy) satellites into a highly elliptical orbit.