Dr Sivan said the plan was to lower the altitude of the rocket in space from 500 km to 350 km to launch the satellites in different orbits.

NELLORE: The Indian Space Research Organisation will carry out three experiments with its workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, that will be launched with 31 satellites from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Shar, Sriharikota at 9.28 am on June 23. The satellites include India’s Cartosat-2E, a satellite developed by students of Noorul Islam University, Tamil Nadu, and 29 satellites from 15 countries including the US, Italy and Germany.

Director, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Dr Sivan said the plan was to lower the altitude of the rocket in space from 500 km to 350 km to launch the satellites in different orbits. The fourth stage will be kept active till it makes 10 orbits around the earth. Earlier, the fourth stage of the rocket that had launched 20 satellites in one go on June 22, 2016, was cut off for 16 minutes and 30 seconds after the lift-off. The 20 satellites were injected into the same orbit.

Before that, scientists had re-started the fourth-stage engine of the PSLV for four seconds after the rocket injected six Singapore satellites into the same orbit on December 16, 2015. These experiments came in handy for Isro to place eight satellites in different orbits from the fourth stage of the PSLV-C35 on September 26, 2016.

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