On a hot summer evening accentuated by clear blue skies, the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) workhorse launch vehicle on its 55th mission, the PSLV-C53, rose into the sky, painting it with a pencil-shaped plume of smoke before it curved away and injected three Singaporean satellites into their intended orbits in the second dedicated mission for the commercial arm of ISRO, New Space India Limited (NSIL).
The mission also served an additional purpose for ISRO, which decided to use the fourth stage, the PS4, as a stationary platform in orbit to conduct scientific experiments. ISRO Chairman, S. Somanath, described the manoeuvre as “a poem in orbit”.
