The final destination is a circular Lunar orbit 100 kilometres above the surface of the Moon. The first challenge for the engineers of ISRO will be to put the satellite into the transfer orbit around the earth. The PSLV has been modified to lift the 1,304 tonne satellite and attain a highly elliptical orbit.
The nearest point (perigee) of this orbit will be about 250 kilometres and the farthest point (apogee) will be about 22,860 km away from earth. The launch vehicle will have to achieve a velocity of about 26,000 km an hour to place the satellite into the transfer orbit. This, it will do in just over 18 minutes, or 1,096 seconds, to be exact. The capacity of the strap-on-booster motors of PSLV has been increased from nine to 12 tonnes of solid propellant to achieve that. (Because of the increased length of the strap-ons, they are referred to with the suffix XL.)
The first stage of the vehicle together with its six strap-on boosters carries 320 tonnes of propellants. The third stage also uses solid propellant while the second and fourth stages use liquid propellants. Once the launch Vehicle puts the satellite into orbit, the inbuilt thrusters are used to move it into an extended transfer orbit.
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