Indian rocket launches 7 satellites to orbit

ANKARA (AA): India’s national space agency on Sunday launched a rocket carrying seven satellites and placed them into orbit.

The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in southern India at 6.30 a.m. local time (0100 GMT), the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) announced.

“The mission is successfully accomplished,” the ISRO said in a statement. “PSLV-C56 vehicle launched all seven satellites precisely into their intended orbits”

This was the agency’s seventh successful launch in 2023 after its lunar exploration mission earlier this month aiming to land a rover on the moon.

“DS-SAR, a Radar Imaging Earth Observation satellite is the primary satellite for the mission. In addition to this, there are six co-passenger customer satellites also belonging to Singapore,” an earlier statement had said.

The DS-SAR satellite was developed under a partnership between Singapore’s Defense science and Technology Agency and private company ST Engineering from the island nation.​​​​​​​

Indian Minister Jitendra Singh hailed the mission as “another landmark” of the country’s space program after the previous lunar mission.

“In the midst of Chandrayaan-3 mission, ISRO scales another landmark with the successful launch of PSLV-C56/DS-SAR,” Singh said.