April 28. At 12.50 pm sharp, a 44.4-metre-tall PSLV rocket, weighing 320 tonnes, blasted into the clear afternoon skies from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh with a blazing orangered tail trailing behind. After zooming through the sky for nearly 20 minutes, the satellite IRNSS-1G was ejected from the rocket and injected into an elliptical orbit. It swiftly opened its solar panels.
Back home, the mission control room of Indian Space Research Organisation(ISRO) resonated with thunderous applause. The scientists who were till then glued to their monitors burst into cheers. India’s mini GPS, a regional positioning system, was ready to be rolled out.
Prime minister Narendra Modi who was watching the launch live from his office in Delhi congratulated the scientists. “With this successful launch, we will determine our own paths powered by our technology. This is an example of made in India and made for Indians,” he said. The navigational structure was given a new name — NavIC (Navigation Indian Constellation) — by the prime minister. “125 crore Indians have got a new Navic,” he tweeted.
Desi GPS ::
The seven-satellite constellation, IRNSS (Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System), is designed to provide a regional positioning system for India with the least number of satellites. It is expected to provide accurate position information service to users in India and 1,500 km around the Indian mainland.
NavIC will provide two types of services — Standard Positioning Service for all users, and Restricted Service, which is an encrypted service provided only to authorised users. It is expected to provide position accuracy that is better than 20 metres in the primary service area.
Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, head of space policy initiative at Observer Research Foundation, says IRNSS is primarily meant for India’s own use and will liberate it from its dependence on the US’ Global Positioning System (GPS), Russia’s Glonass and other foreign systems, which are not under its control and therefore potentially dangerous during conflicts, in particular.
“IRNSS has multiple navigation applications, everything from providing autonomous navigation capability to Indian soldiers, sailors and airmen. It also provides India with a part of an extremely accurate guidance system for everything from GPS-enabled bombs to long-range missiles,” says Rajagopalan. Ajey Lele, space expert and assistant director of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, says IRNSS has both commercial and strategic utility. “India may allow its neighbours to use this system and so it has foreign policy relevance,” he says.
The first of the seven satellites, IRNSS-1A, was launched on July 2, 2013. Six satellites have already started functioning from their designated orbital slots after extensive on-orbit test and evaluation. With the launch and operationalisation of IRNSS-1G, the seventh in the constellation, the navigational system is complete. The cost of each satellite is around Rs 125 crore while the total cost of constellation is around Rs 1,410 crore.
Major areas of applications include terrestrial, aerial and marine navigation, disaster management, integration with mobile phones, terrestrial navigational aid for hikers and travellers, visual and voice navigation for drivers.
Source:- ET
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