CHENNAI: "Everything is normal" with the four satellites put into orbit by the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C7) on Wednesday and all are "working well," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) officials said.

The four satellites are the Cartosat-2 and the Space Capsule Recovery Experiment (SRE), both of ISRO; the LAPAN-TUBSAT jointly built by Indonesia and the Technical University of Berlin; and the Pehuensat-1 of Argentina.

The SRE is a recoverable satellite that ISRO plans to bring back to Earth on January 22.

It will splash down in a pre-determined area of 30 km by 15 km in the Bay of Bengal, about 140 km east of Sriharikota island and the Coast Guard will recover it.

The health of the Cartosat-2 and the SRE is being monitored with the help of antennae situated at the Spacecraft Control Centre of the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) and its network of ground stations at Bangalore, Lucknow, Mauritius, Bearslake in Russia, Biak in Indonesia and Svalbard in Sweden. A station at Sasketoon in Canada also keeps a tab on the SRE.

S.K. Shivakumar, ISTRAC Director, Bangalore, said the Cartosat-2 and the SRE "are doing fine" and that "we are planning to switch on the panchromatic camera on board the Cartosat-2 tomorrow [January 12] and collect data."

Mr. Shivakumar said: "We have to work out the plans for the re-entry of the SRE. We have a nominal plan. Since the launch was so good, the pre-launch plans for the recovery of the SRE hold good too."

The two micro-gravity experiments to be done with the help of the payloads on board the SRE will start on January 12. One experiment relates to the growth of crystals and the second is a bio-mimetic experiment for studying minerals in micro-gravity environment.

ISRO rocket engineers are overjoyed at the success of the PSLV-C7 mission because it came after the failure of the Geo-synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle launch on July 10, 2006. The GSLV broke up because of the malfunctioning of one of its liquid motors, which had a manufacturing defect. This motor, fired by liquid fuel, is common to both the PSLV and the GSLV.

George Koshy, Vehicle Director, PSLV-C7, said: "After the last [failed] mission of ISRO, we took extra care to re-examine all the items, all the systems and all the sub-systems. Subsequently, quality assessment teams went into all the possible defects that may be hiding inside. It was a meticulous job. We left no room for failure. We worked extended hours. Nobody minded the extra hours. ISRO's goal was to have a 100 per cent success and we did it," he said.

The teams inspected the total vehicle, although only the liquid strap-on booster motor in the GSLV had failed, Mr. Koshy said.

John Zachariah, Deputy Director, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram, said: "We took every care in the vehicle integration, testing, launch rehearsal and launch operations."

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