ISRO’s 100th launch: GSLV-F15 successfully deploys NavIC satellite

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) made history on Wednesday with the 100th rocket launch from spaceport Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR, Sriharikota. The successful textbook launch was the first under the new ISRO chairman, V Narayanan, who succeeded S Somanath on January 13. It was also the first launch by ISRO in 2025.

The 99th launch from Sriharikota was on December 31, when the PSLV-C60 mission successfully placed two spacecraft in a circular orbit to conduct the Space Docking Experiment.

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The GSLV-F15, with an indigenous cryogenic stage, placed the Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC) NVS-02 satellite into a Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit. The satellite will enhance India’s regional navigational capabilities. The 3-stage, 50.9 m GSLV-F15 vehicle had a lift-off mass of 420.7 tonnes.

The GSLV-F15 took off at 6.23 am from the second launch pad. It was the 17th flight of India’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) and 11th flight with an indigenous cryogenic stage. It was the 8th operational flight of GSLV with an indigenous Cryogenic stage. The GSLV-F15 payload fairing - nose cone used to protect a spacecraft payload against the impact of dynamic pressure and aerodynamic heating during launch through an atmosphere - is a metallic version with a diameter of 3.4 m.

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NavIC navigation system

Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC) is India’s independent regional navigation satellite system designed to provide accurate Position, Velocity and Timing (PVT) service to users in India as well as to regions extending about 1,500 km beyond the Indian land mass.

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NavIC will provide two types of services, namely, Standard Positioning Service (SPS) and Restricted Service (RS).

Sriharikota island, located 80 km north of Chennai, was chosen in 1969 for a satellite launching station. It became operational on October 9, 1971, when an RH-125 sounding rocket was launched. The first attempted launch of an orbital satellite, Rohini 1A, aboard a Satellite Launch Vehicle, took place on August 10, 1979, but due to a failure in thrust vectoring of the rocket’s second stage, the satellite’s orbit decayed on August 19, 1979.

The SHAR facility has two launch pads that have important launches, including India’s lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-1 and Mars orbiter Mangalyaan. Recently, the Union Cabinet approved the third launch pad at a cost of ₹3,984 crore.

“I am extremely happy to announce that the first launch of this year has been successfully accomplished With GSLV-F15 launch vehicle precisely injecting the navigational satellite NVS-02 in the required and intended orbit. This mission is the 100th launch from our launch pads, which is a very historic milestone for India,” ISRO Chairman Narayanan said from the mission control room after the launch. “Data shows that all the vehicle systems have performed as expected. The satellites were injected with a very minimum level of dispersal,” he said.

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India’s space programme was conceived and started by the visionary leader Vikram Sarabhai and taken forward by generations of leaders, including former ISRO directors K Radhakrishna, Kiran Kumar, K Sivan and S Somanath who were present in the VIP gallery), he said.

Till today, ISRO has developed six generations of launch vehicles. The first launch vehicle was developed under the guidance of Satish Dhawan with APJ Abdul Kalam as the Project Director and the launch took place in 1979. From then till today, we have accomplished 100 launches from these launch pads (two). Over these 100 launches, we have lifted 548 satellites to orbit and 120 tonnes of payload, including 23 tonnes of 433 foreign satellites.

This launch site has witnessed several significant milestones of the Indian space programme including three Chandrayaan missions, a MARS Orbiter mission, Aditya L1 mission, SRE mission, a single rocket placing 104 satellites in the orbit and a host of communication and earth observation and navigational satellites, he said.

The NavIC system is evolving as the backbone of indigenous satellite navigation ecosystem of the Indian region. The first batch of the IRNSS satellite launched in the previous decade has been successful in establishing the P&T services in the country. The NVS series is the second generation of these satellites that are progressively deployed by the GSLV to augment the NavIC constellation and strengthen the P&T ecosystem in the nation. The NVS incorporates the second indigenous atomic clock, which is a shining example of Make in India in critical technology development. Today, many applications based on Navic spanning from strategic users, tracking ships, time synchronisation, train tracking and safety of life alert dissemination are accomplished.

“Reward for hard work is more work and ISRO has got a very busy year ahead with many missions lined up in the coming months. The NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar Mission) by GSLV-F16; a commercial flight of LVM-3 by NSIL for a foreign customer; a technology demonstration satellite to validate 34 technologies that will launched by the first PSLV being realised by an industry consortium and two earth observation satellite missions,” he said.

“We are progressing extremely well for the preparation of the first un-crewed G1 mission as part of the Gaganyaan programme and some more experiments are targeted this year. ISRO is also gearing up for a host of developments, including the next generation launcher NGLV; Chandrayaan missions; Venus Orbiter Mission along with a third launch pad at Sriharikota and second launch complex at Kulasekarapatnam. We are accelerating the activities this year,” he said.

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