Edusat launch today: ISRO

The final countdown began on Sunday for the launch of Edusat, India's exclusive satellite for educational services, by geosynchronous satellite launch vehicle (GSLV-f01) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at the space port of Sriharikota, about 80 km north of Chennai.

Preparations for the launch of Edusat, scheduled at 4.01 pm, are proceeding 'smoothly' at the SDSC, on the eastern coast of Andhra Pradesh, the Bangalore-headquartered Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said in a statement here.

The launch rehearsal for the 'first operational flight' of GSLV was carried out on Thursday last, it said. The final countdown began at 1 am on Sunday morning.

The 1,950-kg Edusat, intended to meet the demand for an interactive satellite-distance education system in the country, will be fired into the geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO) by the GSLV rocket and from GTO, it will reach the geostationary orbit (GSO) at 36,000 kms above the earth.

The third flight of GSLV-f0-1, its first operational mission, will fire Edusat, built with a mission life of seven years, and place it in the same orbit as Kalpana-1 and Insat-3c communication satellites.

In the two developmental test flights of the home-grown GSLV rocket conducted in April 2001 and May 2003, it put into orbit Gsat-1 and Gsat-2 satellites into GTO.

GSLV-f0-1 is a 49-metre three-stage rocket, consisting of a core motor with a 138 tonne of solid propellant and four strap-on motors in the first stage; 39 tonnes of liquid fuel in the second stage; and 12.5 tonnes of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen in the third cryogenic stage.