GSLV Mk III rocket

1. The GSLV Mk III D1 rocket successfully launched from the second launch pad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh.

2. The GSLV Mk III D1 is a three-stage vehicle with indigenous cryogenic upper stage engine+ designed to carry heavier communication satellites into the Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO).

3. Apart from the cryogenic engine, designated C25, carrying about 28 tonnes of propellants, it has two solid strap-on motors (S200) and a core liquid booster (L110).

4. The mission is significant as the GSLV Mk III+ , that weighs equivalent to the weight of five fully-loaded Boeing Jumbo Jets or as much as 200 fully grown elephants, is the heaviest rocket to be launched from our own soil. Till now, Isrohad to depend on foreign launchers for communication satellites weighing more than 2,300 kg.

5. The GSLV Mk III D1 is capable of lifting payloads of up to 4,000 kg into the GTO and 10,000 kg into the Low Earth Orbit.

6. The mission would also augment India’s communication resources+ as a single GSAT-19 satellite will be equivalent to having a constellation of six to seven of the older variety of communication satellites in space.

7. This is India’s rocket of the future as it will undoubtedly be human rated to carry Indian astronauts likely to be named ‘gaganauts or vyomanauts’. Former Isro chairman K Kasturirangan, the man who conceived the GSLV Mk III, confirms it will be the country’s vehicle to ferry Indians into space.

8. The most innovative development on GSAT-19 is that for the first time there will be no transponders on the satellite. Instead for the first time, Isro is using a whole new way beaming data down using multiple frequency beams and hence it is dubbed “a high through put satellite”.
9. GSAT-19 is going to be powered for the first time with indigenously-made Lithium-ion batteries. These batteries have been made so that India’s self-reliance quotient can increase. In addition, similar batteries can then be used to power electric vehicles like cars and buses.
10. Isro says GSAT-19 also features certain advanced spacecraft technologies including “miniaturised heat pipe, fibre optic gyro, Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) accelerometer”. These are all important developments being tested so that they become mainstay systems on future missions.
Source: TOI

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