ISRO to launch third satellite

Chennai: ISRO will launch the third of seven series of satellites on October 10 from the spaceport of Sriharikota.

It will put in place India’s navigation system on par with US’ Global Positioning System (GPS) .

The launch is scheduled for 1:56 am on October 10, ISRO announced on Friday.

As part of its aspirations to build a regional navigational system equivalent to GPS of the US, ISRO plans to send seven satellites to put in place the IRNSS.

The first two satellites in the series, IRNSS 1A and IRNSS 1B were launched from Sriharikota on July 1 2013 and April 4 this year respectively.

ISRO needs to launch at least four of the seven satellites to start operations of the IRNSS, officials said.

Being developed by India, IRNSS is designed to provide accurate position information service to users in the country as well as the region extending upto 1,500 km from its boundary, which is its primary service area.

IRNSS’ applications include terrestrial and marine navigation, disaster management, vehicle tracking and fleet management.

IRNSS is similar to US’ Global Positioning System, Russia’s Glonass and Europe’s Galileo. China and Japan also have similar systems, ‘Beidou’ and ‘Quasi Zenith’, ISRO officials said.

 

(With inputs from PTI)