An Indian PSLV-CA (Core Alone) variant rocket lifted off from the Sriharikota launch site at 0101 GMT on 30 July 2023. Aboard were seven satellites. The main payload was the DS-SAR – a 352 kg radar satellite which is operated by DS Engineering for the Singaporean government as well as for commercial use. The Synthetic Aperture Radar was reportedly built by Israel’s IAI SMS Group – Space Division.
PSLV-CA launches seven satellites for Singapore on flight PSLV-C56. Courtesy: ISRO
Also on the launch to a shallow five degree inclined 538 x 520 km low Earth orbit were six cubesat class spacecraft: Orbital Astro’s Orb-12 Strider test satellite – a 12U cubesat to demonstrate next generation propulsion systems catering specifically for small satellite constellations; ARCADE is an atmospheric research satellite built by students at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU); GALASSIA-2 mission for the National University of Singapore is to perform an inter-satellite link (ISL) with TeLEOS-1 and demonstrate Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) multispectral imagery for space applications; NuLIon has been developed by NuSpace as the seed satellite for a LEO equatorial constellation providing continuous LoRaWAN IoT services; SCOOB-II is a heliophysics 3U student CubeSat for NTU, VELOX-AM is an experimental satellite for NTU.
