ISRO achieved record high in last one year, says Chairperson S. Somanath

Speaking at the celebration of 77th Independence Day at ISRO headquarters in Bengaluru on August 15, S. Somanath said, “Launching satellites, building rockets and launching in numbers, and the numbers are really a record high this year. It is not only the record that we are trying to break, it is the uniqueness of the missions that have been accomplished.”

ISRO Chairperson S Somanath said the space agency has achieved a record high in the last one year, not only in terms of launching satellites, but also with regard to the uniqueness of the missions.

Speaking at the celebration of 77th Independence Day at ISRO headquarters in Bengaluru on August 15, Mr Somanath said, “Between the previous Independence Day and now, we’ve been very, very successful in achieving many missions. Let me thank all of you all across ISRO centres, Department of Space for the wonderful accomplishment you have made in the last one year. Launching satellites, building rockets and launching in numbers, and the numbers are really a record high this year. It is not only the record that we are trying to break, it is the uniqueness of the missions that have been accomplished.”

On the Chandrayaan-3 mission, he said that it is being hailed as an important mission and everybody is looking forward to its soft-landing.

“We made a new SSLV rocket successfully. We made the LVM-3 capture the world market in terms of commercial exploitation. We launched the Oceansat-3 satellite, which is an engineering marvel. Aditya-L1 is ready for launch in the next few weeks,” Mr Somanath said.

On upcoming missions, he said that the X-ray Polarimeter Satellite (XPoSat) is ready. XPoSat is India’s first dedicated polarimetry mission to study various dynamics of bright astronomical X-ray sources in extreme conditions

INSAT-3DS, Gaganyaan test vehicle mission, Gaganyaan unmanned mission, and the Indo-US NISAR (NASA-ISRO) mission are getting ready to be launched this year, and early next year.