ISRO's heaviest rocket LVM3 will carry 36 satellites
India's space agency ISRO will launch 36 satellites in its heaviest rocket on Sunday midnight, heralding its entry into the global commercial satellite launch service market.
The Indian Space Research Organisation, or ISRO, has been successful in projecting the country as a global low-cost provider of services in space. It launched 31 small satellites, several of them for European nations, in June 2017.
ISRO's heaviest rocket, the LVM3, will carry 36 satellites of the London-based private communications firm OneWeb, in which India's Bharti Enterprises is a major investor and shareholder.
A 24-hour countdown to the launch will start just after midnight today.
This would be the LVM3's first commercial satellite launch. The contract for it was signed between the London-based firm and NewSpace India Ltd, or NSIL, a central government company.
"It is (the) first LVM3 dedicated commercial launch on demand through NSIL," the Indian company said.
"Another set of 36 OneWeb satellites will be launched by the LVM3 in the first half of next year," an NSIL executive told news agency PTI.
The newest and heaviest rocket of the Indian space agency can carry a four-tonne class of satellite, equivalent to the weight of a large flatbed truck.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has been promoting India's space programme as a showcase of low-cost technology.
In 2014, India sent an orbiter to Mars at a cost of $74 million, a fraction of the $671 million the US space agency NASA spent on its MAVEN Mars mission.
"We reached Mars on a budget less than that of a Hollywood film," PM Modi said in June 2017, ahead of the launch of 31 small satellites.
ISRO with its low-cost ability to launch heavier communications satellites, which are at the higher end of the launch business and more lucrative, gives it an advantage over more expensive launch services of other nations.