ISRO's PSLV-C33 carrying India's navigation satellite, the IRNSS-1G lifts off successfully from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. (Photo: PTI)
ISRO's PSLV-C33 carrying India's navigation satellite, the IRNSS-1G lifts off successfully from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. (Photo: PTI) With the launch of the seventh and last satellite of the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System on Thursday from Sriharikota, India joined a select club of countries with their own global positioning systems.
The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, in its 35th flight, placed the 1,485-kg IRNSS satellite in orbit about 20 minutes after launch at 12.50 pm.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who watched the live telecast of the launch from Delhi, christened the system Navic, or Navigation with Indian Satellite Constellation.
An elated Mr Modi spoke about the benefits of the country’s very own navigation system for terrestrial, aerial and marine navigation, vehicle tracking and fleet management, disaster management and integration with mobile phones. “With this successful launch, we will determine our own paths, powered by our technology. This is a great gift to the 125 crore people of the country by scientists. Through space science, lives of people can be transformed and our scientists have achieved many accomplishments in space science,” the PM said while congratulating Isro scientists.
He observed that they had also helped the other Saarc nations as well, an obvious reference to the IRNSS system which is expected to provide position accuracy of better than 20 metres over India and an area extending about 1,500 sq km around India.
