There is an air of expectancy at Sriharikota even as the Geo-synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV-D3) stands gleaming in off-white and grey on the beachside launch pad of the island. It was fitted together at the towering Vehicle Assembly Building and moved to the pad on April 7. The vehicle, 49 metres tall and weighing 419 tonnes, was married up with the satellite GSAT-4 earlier. When the vehicle lifts off at 4.27 p.m. on April 15, it will be a major riposte to the United States' technology denial tactics.
“Crucial mission”
“The vehicle has been assembled and is ready for the launch,” Mission Director G. Ravindranath told journalists at the spaceport on Friday. He called it “a crucial mission because we are flying our own cryogenic stage for the first time in this flight.” It was “the most reviewed vehicle” and the result of “our efforts of the last 19 years. We started in 1991 and we have reached this stage despite technology denials.”
The entire flight from lift-off will last 1,022 seconds. Of this duration, the indigenous cryogenic engine alone will fire for 720 seconds. At the end of 1,022 seconds, the cryogenic engine will catapult the communication satellite GSAT-4 into the orbit at a velocity of 10.2 km a second. It will be a geo-synchronous transfer orbit (GTO) with a perigee of 170 km and an apogee of 36,000 km.
Source : http://beta.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/article393152.ece
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