An Indian rocket launched three satellites and an experimental orbiting platform on Thursday morning (June 30) on the vehicle's 55th mission to date.
The four-stage, 145.7-foot-tall (44.4 meters) Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) lifted off from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in southeastern India on Thursday at 8:33 a.m. EDT (1233 GMT; 6:03 p.m. local time) into the clear blue sky in what was described as "a marvelous liftoff" by the mission commentator.
The rocket's stages separated faultlessly as planned with payload separation commencing at 8:53 a.m. EDT (1253 GM
The PSLV carried three satellites on this mission, all of them from Singapore. The largest is an 805-pound (365 kilograms) Earth-observation craft known as DS-EO, which "will provide full-color images for land classification and serv[e] humanitarian assistance and disaster relief needs," ISRO officials wrote in a mission description.
Also going up on Thursday was NeuSAR, a 342-pound (155 kg) commercial satellite that will image Earth using synthetic aperture radar. The third spacecraft, called Scoob-1, was developed by students at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. It weigh
