ISRO to Launch 2nd Development Flight (D2) of SSLV in First Quarter of 2023

Bengaluru: Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has announced that the second developmental flight (D2) of the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle ( SSLV ) is scheduled for the first quarter of 2023. The Small Satellite Launch Vehicle is designated as SSLV-D2/EOS-07.

The first demonstration flight of the SSLV took place in August last year. In this, the satellites were injected into an elliptical orbit instead of a circular one.

The first developmental flight of Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) lifted off from Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) on 7^th August 2022 at 09.18 Hrs IST. The objective of the mission (SSLV-D1/EOS-02) was to inject EOS-02 satellite of ISRO into a circular orbit of 356.2 km with an inclination of 37.21°. Azaadisat, a student satellite was also accommodated in the mission, authorized by IN-SPACe.

However, the spacecraft was injected into a highly elliptical unstable orbit due to a shortfall in velocity, leading to their decay and deorbiting immediately, in spite of normal performance of all solid propulsion stages. The orbit achieved was 360.56 km x 75.66 km with an inclination of 36.56. Initial investigations with the flight data indicated that the lift-off of SSLV D1 was normal along with the normal performance of all solid propulsion stages. However, the mission could not be achieved due to an anomaly during the second stage (SS2) separation, which triggered a mission salvage mode (which is a procedure adopted to attempt minimum stabilized orbital conditions for the Spacecraft in case of an anomaly in the vehicle system)