New Delhi:
ISRO ended 2024 on a excessive with the profitable launch of its 99th mission – the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle or PSLV-C60 – which has two vital experimental missions – SpaDex and POEM-4. Even as these experiments proceed into the brand new 12 months, the Indian house company seems to be to journey the excessive wave and has made a giant announcement.
Indian house company chairman S Somanath declared that 2025’s first mission will probably be ISRO’s landmark one hundredth mission. It will probably be in January, he confirmed, however didn’t reveal the date it’s being deliberate.
He nevertheless talked about that the one hundredth mission will on-board the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle or GSLV Mk-II rocket. The mission will probably be so as to add to the Indian satellite tv for pc navigation system being arrange and expanded over time by ISRO. The mission will probably be titled the GSLV-F15/NVS-02 Mission. The payload would be the IRNSS-1K satellite tv for pc, a part of India’s navigation satellite tv for pc constellation.
NVS or Navigation Satellite is a part of the Navigation with Indian Constellation or NavIC – India’s model of a Global Navigation Satellite Systems or GNSS – just like the Global Positioning System or GPS usually used worldwide.
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THE GSLV-F15/NVS-02 MISSION AND ITS OBJECTIVES
GSLV-F15 would be the seventeenth flight of India’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle or GSLV. It will even be the eighth operational flight of the GSLV (eleventh total flight) with India’s indigenous Cryogenic stage.
The key targets of the mission beneath the NavIC system will probably be to assist:
- Precision army exercise
- Strategic purposes
- Terrestrial, aerial, and maritime navigation
- Precision agriculture
- Geodetic surveying
- Emergency companies
- Fleet administration
- Location-based companies in cellular units
- Orbit dedication for satellites
- Marine fisheries
- Timing companies for monetary establishments, energy grids, and different authorities businesses
- Internet-of-Things (IoT) primarily based purposes
ALL ABOUT THE NVS-02 / IRNSS-1K SATELLITE
NVS-02, because the identify suggests, would be the second within the sequence of 2nd-generation navigation satellites and the ninth satellite tv for pc within the Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC). Just like its predecessor – NVS-01 – the NVS-02 will most definitely have two sorts of payloads – navigation payload and ranging payload.

Image Credit: ISRO
The navigational payload is what transmits alerts to customers on Earth. It does so utilizing three bands within the spectrum – L1, L5, and S band. Since time is relative, and lots of components have an effect on it, to have the exact time, an atomic clock is on-board this payload. It is normally a Rubidium atomic clock. A rubidium atomic clock measures the size of 1 second by counting the oscillations of rubidium-87 atoms. These clocks are so highly effective that they’ve an accuracy of about three components in 10 quadrillion, which implies they will maintain time inside one second over 100 million years.
The ranging payload consists of a transponder. This helps the navigation satellite tv for pc transmit time-stamped navigation alerts to the receivers on the floor station. This info is then processed on the end-user stage to derive their precise place, velocity, and time. This helps in offering seamless and continuous service no matter climate situations on Earth.
The 2nd-generation satellites in NavIC have a way more strong encryption system to maintain all communications fully safe.
As within the case of US’ GPS, India’s NavIC additionally has twin use – civilian and army. NavIC was earlier named IRNSS or Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System, which had a way more restricted protection space.
Currently there are 4 international navigation methods – GPS from USA, GLONASS from Russia, Galileo from European Union, and BeiDou from China. India’s NavIC and Japan’s QZSS are nonetheless solely regional, however could also be international sooner or later.
The final GSLV mission was the GSLV-F14/INSAT-3DS Mission, which was launched on February 17, 2024. It positioned the INSAT-3DS satellite tv for pc payload right into a GTO or Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit. The final GSLV mission used for NavIC was in May 2023, when ISRO launched NVS-02’s predecessor NVS-01. The mission was titled GSLV-F12/NVS-01 Mission.