Posted: Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 2:48 PM ET (1848 GMT)
An Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) successfully launched Friday five satellites built by a British company. The PSLV-XL rocket lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at 12:28 pm EDT (1628 GMT, 9:58 pm local time) Friday and placed its payload of five satellites into a 647-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit. Three of the satellites were the DMC3 satellites, weighing 450 kilograms each and built by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL) for the Chinese company 21AT. The three satellites will join the Disaster Monitoring Constellation to provide Earth imagery. The launch also carried two SSTL-built technology demonstration payloads, the 91-kilogram CBNT-1 and 7-kilogram Nanosatellite De-OrbitSail spacecraft. The mission represented the heaviest payload the PSLV has launched on a commercial mission.
