PSLV-C49 mission lifts off on Nov. 7 from India. Photo: ISRO

India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) launched a national Earth Observation (EO) satellite along with nine satellites for international customers on Nov. 7. The mission, PSLV-C49 took off from Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Chennai, India on November Saturday. Earth Observation satellite EOS-01 was successfully injected into its orbit 15 minutes after liftoff. The mission was originally planned for March but delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

EOS-01, formerly known as RISAT-2BR2 was built by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). It is an X-band, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite designed for use for agriculture, forestry, and disaster management support.

The nine customer satellites for Lacuna Space, Kleos Space, and Spire were launched under a commercial arrangement with NewSpace India Limited (NSIL). Spaceflight organized the rideshare of four satellites from Spire, and four satellites for Kleos Space. 

The Lacuna Space Internet of Things (IoT) gateway satellite was transported to equatorial Low-Earth Orbit (LEO). CEO Rob Spurrett said in a release that the latest satellite offers higher sensitivity and capacity for message reception from LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network) devices and will give the company better coverage of regions around the equator. This brings Lacuna Space to three satellites on-orbit and four IoT gateways between the three satellites. Last week, Lacuna Space completed in-orbit checks for a satellite launched on Sept. 28 by Roscosmos.

Kleos Space reported that initial communication with its cluster of four Scouting Mission satellites has been established. They are the initial satellites in its Radio Frequency (RF) monitoring constellation and will collect data over interest such as Strait of Hormuz, South China Sea, East/West Africa, Southern Sea of Japan, and northern Australian coast. 

Kleos CEO Andy Bowyer said, “This launch marks an important milestone for Kleos to start delivering our commercial and independent data to government agencies, the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) community and organisations interested in locating threats, assets or those in need of search and rescue.”