Bangalore, Sep 23 (IANS) India Wednesday successfully injected a cluster of six European micro-satellites into low-earth orbit after deploying its 960 kg remote sensing satellite Oceansat-2 in the polar sun-synchronous orbit.
This is the second time India’s space agency launched multiple satellites - it deployed on the polar orbit a record 10 satellites, including eight international nano-satellites, on April 28, 2008.

Of the six micro-satellites, which had a piggy ride on Oceansat-2, four are from Germany and one each from Switzerland and Turkey, with a combined weight of 20 kg.

The first four tiny spacecraft, christened Cubsats, are educational satellites from European universities weighing around one kg and developed to perform technology demonstration in space.

The other two spacecrafts are christened Rubin-9.1 and Rubin-9.2.

“The satellites were launched inside a single pico-satellite launcher, also weighing one kg,” the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said in a statement after the seven satellites were launched onboard the 320-tonne polar launch satellite vehicle (PSLV-C14) from spaceport Sriharikota, about 80 km northeast of Chennai.

Cubesat-1 from University Wurzburg in Germany is a pico-satellite. Its mission objective is to demonstrate a newly developed attitude determination and control system and how a global positioning system (GPS) functions in a tiny spacecraft.

Cubesat-2 or BeeSat from Technical University of Berlin in Germany is also a pico-satellite. Its objective is to verify the on-orbit function of newly developed micro reaction wheels for pico-satellite applications.

It will demonstrate the use of coin-sized micro reaction wheels for attitude control of pico-satellites in orbit as one of the key elements.

Similarly, Cubesat-3 or ITU-pSAT1 from Istanbul Technical University in Turkey will examine the performance of an onboard passive stability system consisting of a magnet, which will align the micro-satellite to the magnetic field of the earth with an error of about 15 degrees according to simulations. It will also download photographs taken by a camera with a resolution of 640×480 pixels.

Cubesat-4 or SwissCube from Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne in Switzerland will take optical measurements and characterise the airglow intensity over selected latitudes and longitudes. The payload will demonstrate that the airglow emissions are strong enough to be measured by an off-the-shelf detector and validate the concept to develop a low-cost earth sensor.

Rubin-9.1 and Rubin-9.2, weighing 8 kg each, are primarily used for the automatic identification system for maritime applications. Being non-separable payloads, the two mini-satellites are mounted on the fourth stage of the rocket’s upper deck.

Rubin-0.1, developed by Luxspace, will provide an insight into the issue of message collisions that limit detection in areas of dense shipping.

Rubin-9.2 from Angstrom in Sweden will test and qualify nano-technologies. It will also continue the space-based automatic identification system receiver experiments that were conducted by Rubin-7 and Rubin-8 missions launched last year.

After the main payload was injected into the orbit 18 minutes after lift-off, the four auxiliary Cubesats were separated and placed in the orbit sequentially 45 seconds later, while the two Rubin satellites remained attached to the upper stage of the rocket.

“The initial signals indicate normal health of the satellites,” the statement said.