Tirupati, Jan 10 : ISRO Chairman V Narayanan visited the Tirupati temple on Saturday and offered prayers ahead of the PSLV-C62 mission to deploy the EOS-N1 ‘earth observation satellite’ along with 14 other payloads into space.
Officials of the ISRO accompanied Narayanan. They carried a miniature replica of the launch vehicle while offering prayers at the temple.
Speaking to reporters, he said the mission is scheduled to be launched on January 12.
“On January 12, we are going to launch PSLV-C62 carrying the EOS-N1 satellite,” he said, adding that the target orbit for the mission is a polar sun-synchronous orbit.
The 25-hour countdown is scheduled to commence on January 11 for the mission, which would be the 64th flight of PSLV.
PSLV has completed 63 flights so far, including the ambitious Chandrayaan-1, Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), and Aditya-L1 mission.
The primary payload, an ‘earth observation satellite’ built by Thailand and the United Kingdom, will fly piggyback along with 13 other co-passenger satellites, which will be deployed into the intended sun-synchronous orbit around 17 minutes after lift-off.
Noting that this would be ISRO’s first launch of the year, he said the mission would take the total number of foreign satellites launched from Indian soil to 442.
