27 SEPTEMBER 2015: Astrosat to be launched on Monday

Ø  In a show of solidarity and as a message to the world community, leaders of Brazil, Germany, India and Japan on Saturday called for urgent reforms of the United Nations “in a fixed time frame”, expressing disappointment that no substantial progress had been made in the past decade on the issue. The Group of Four, or G4, Summit, taking place after a decade, was hosted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In the morning, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe travelled to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel where Mr. Modi is staying. Japan, Germany, India and Brazil are the third, fourth, seventh and eighth biggest economies, respectively. In terms of population, India is the second biggest, Brazil fifth, Japan 10th and Germany 16th biggest in the world.

Ø  strosat, the country’s first astronomy observatory to study distant celestial objects, will be launched on Monday morning. A 50-hour countdown began at 8 a.m. on Saturday at the launch port in Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. The Indian Space Research Organisation said the launch vehicle, PSLV-C30, was being readied with propellants ahead of the launch, slated for 10 a.m. at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre. Six tiny satellites of three foreign customers, weighing 118 kg, are being put in space on the same flight. Significantly, for the first time, the PSLV launcher has a U.S. customer using it to put four small satellites in space. The other customers are from Canada and Indonesia. The 1,513-kg Astrosat, estimated to have cost around Rs. 180 crore, carries five instruments and is among the few Indian scientific satellites. Most of ISRO’s spacecraft are planned for specific applications such as communication, Earth observation and more recently, navigation. Moving in a near Equatorial orbit 650 km above Earth, Astrosat will study black holes, scan the distant universe, star birth regions beyond our galaxy, binary and neutron starts over at least five years. It will simultaneously observe the sky in multiple light bands or wavelengths of ultraviolet, optical, low and high energy X-ray. For the light-lift workhorse PSLV vehicle, this will be the 31st flight with 30 successes in its belt.