SRIHARIKOTA: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is ``getting ready'' for the next PSLV launch from here by October this year. The vehicle will launch two satellites, CARTOSAT-2 and Space Capsule Recovery Experiment (SRE), according to B.N. Suresh, Director, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram. Dr. Suresh said the SRE launch would be ``a major milestone'' for ISRO because it would be a recoverable satellite. The 600-kg satellite would fall back into the Bay of Bengal after its payloads performed their experiments and the satellite would be retrieved from the sea.

At a press conference on Thursday at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) after the successful PSLV-C6 launch, which deployed CARTOSAT-1 and HAMSAT, P.S. Goel, Director, ISRO Satellite Centre, Bangalore, denied that CARTOSAT-1 had any security objectives.

The CARTOSAT-1 mission was conceived five years ago. It was a satellite for cartography and it had remained so. There was no change in its design or features, asserted Dr. Goel.

D.V.A. Raghava Murthy, Project Director, CARTOSAT-1, said the satellite's health would be checked on Friday and Saturday. The performance of the systems for handling data that would be beamed from the satellite would be checked on Friday.

The cameras on board CARTOSAT would be switched on during Saturday and the National Remote-Sensing Agency (NRSA) at Hyderabad would receive the imageries.

Moon mission

The preparations for the launch of `Chandrayan' ( satellite that would orbit the moon and send back imageries of its terrain, especially craters), were going on well, said ISRO Chairman G. Madhavan Nair. The spacecraft's design had been completed and construction begun. Several organisations were working on the design of an important component of the mission called the Deep Space Tracking Network. It had two giant antennae. While the PSLV-C6 cost Rs.75 crores, the CARTOSAT-1 cost Rs.250 crores to build. HAMSAT cost Rs. 3 crores, said Mr. Madhavan Nair.

For the PSLV-C6 N. Narayanamoorthy was Mission Director; George Koshy was Vehicle Director; and John Zachariah, Deputy Director, VSSC, was in charge of the integration of the vehicle. J.P. Gupta was the Project Director for HAMSAT. Anand Prakash was Associate Mission Director of the flight.

K. Narayana, Director, SDSC, said the second launch pad complex cost Rs. 400 crores and it took five years to complete it. ISRO gave the concept of the second launch pad to MECON, a public sector undertaking based at Ranchi. MECON translated it into design and engineering and executed the job on a turnkey basis.

Those who witnessed the launch on Thursday from the Mission Control Centre at SHAR included Andhra Pradesh Governor Sushil Kumar Shinde and Tamil Nadu Governor Surjit Singh Barnala.

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