Indian rocket to launch 7 multi-national satellites into space today

India will launch Monday evening Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle-C20 (PSLV-C20) rocket which will put into orbit seven satellites that include five from Britain, Canada (two), France and Denmark from Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) rocket launch centre in Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. The launch will sling into orbit the world’s first smart phone-operated nano satellite, a space telescope satellite – and five others including an Indo-French satellite, an official of the Indian space agency said. The Indo-French initiative satellite SARAL will study the sea surface heights and the data generated will be shared by both the countries. The other six satellites that PSLV-C20 would sling into orbit are two Canadian satellite NEOSSat (Near Earth Object Space Surveillance Satellite), the world’s first space telescope designed by Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and Sapphire satellite built by MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA), BRITE and UniBRITE (both Austria), STRaND-1 (Britain) and AAUSAT (Denmark). The STRaND-1 (Surrey Training, Research, and Nanosatellite Demonstrator) is the world’s first ‘smart phone satellite’ carrying Google Nexus One phone running on Android operating system. The 6.5 kg satellite is a Britain mission, jointly developed by the University of Surrey’s Surrey Space Centre (SSC) and Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL). The phone will run several applications including collection of data and take pictures of the earth with its camera. According to CSA, the satellite NEOSSat will detect and track asteroids and satellites circling the globe every 100 minutes and scanning space near the Sun to pin point otherwise almost invisible asteroids. The satellite will also be useful in tracking resident space objects including space debris. On the other hand, Sapphire will look for resident space objects that include functioning satellites and space debris circling between 6,000 km and 40,000 km above the earth. The launch today is the first of the 10 space missions that ISRO has planned for 2013.