ISRO to launch heaviest commercial mission on July 10

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will launch its heaviest ever commercial mission on July 10. ISRO will be launching five British satellites, which weigh nealry 1440 kg, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Sriharikota.

In a statement, ISRO chief Dr K Radhakrishnan said that Indian scientists successfully completed the difficult task of mounting the heavy weights on Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).

There are three identical DMC3 optical Earth observation satellites and two auxiliary satellites, CBNT-1 which is a technology demonstrator Earth observation microsatellite and De-OrbitSail a technology demonstrator nanosatellite, to be launched on Friday.

DMC3 satellites are 3 metre tall and weigh 447 kg each. CBNT-1 weighs 91 kg and nanosatellite De-OrbitSail built by Surrey Space Centre weighs 7 kg. These satellites will help monitoring any surface on Earth and can uidentify resources, watch urban development and monitor disasters, reports tecake.com

France's SPOT 7 satellite, which weighed 714kg, launched on June 30 last year, was the heaviest foreign satellite carried by PSLV until now.  

Related read: After successful Mars mission, ISRO planning next inter-planetary expedition