New Delhi: India's PSLV-C49 carrying its latest earth observation satellite EOS-01 and nine customer satellites lifted off from the spaceport here on Saturday. EOS-01 will be used for civil applications in agriculture, forestry, soil moisture, geology, coastal monitoring and flood monitoring. This is the space agency's first launch since a nationwide coronavirus lockdown was initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 23. An earlier launch - of the GSAT-30 telecommunication satellite - was completed in January, but that was from a base in French Guinea. https://twitter.com/ANI/status/1325018136807002113 The customer satellites include 4 each from the USA and Luxembourg and 1 from Lithuania with objectives ranging from multi-mission remote sensing to maritime applications and technology demonstration. Communication satellite GSAT-30 was the only ISRO satellite launched this year on January 17 but from the European spaceport in French Guyana. After the PSLV-C49 mission, ISRO is targeting to launch PSLV-C50 mission carrying GSAT-12R communication satellite in December. https://twitter.com/i/status/1325013856133935104 At 3.34 pm ISRO said the customer satellites had separated and been injected into their intended orbits. Six minutes earlier the space agency said India's EOS-01 satellite had separated from the fourth stage of the PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) rocket and been injected into orbit.
