Record: India launched 104 satellites into orbit

Today, February 15, Indian OrganizationSpace Research (ISRO) successfully launched the PSLV-C37 launch vehicle and successfully launched 104 satellites into orbit. The launch of the rocket took place at 7 am Moscow time, and already 17 minutes after the start of the flight, specialists began to launch satellites into orbit. Due to the large number of spacecraft, the work had to be divided into several stages. It took only half an hour to launch all the satellites into orbit.

Kieran Kumar, President of ISRO, held a press conference during which he congratulated employees on the success and confirmed that all satellites were put into orbit.

The largest satellite on boardPSLV-C37, weighed 715 kilograms. He was made to observe the surface of the Earth, and he began to go into orbit first, reaching an altitude of 505 kilometers. The rest of the spacecraft are ordinary nanosatellites, whose weight is not more than 10 kilograms. Of these, 88 satellites belong to the American company Planet Labs, all of them are intended for shooting our planet from orbit. Another eight American satellites from Spire Global are made to track ships. Israel, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the UAE also used the ISRO services and sent one nanosatellite into orbit.

With this launch, India set a new record inspace industry by the number of spacecraft simultaneously launched into space. The previous record belonged to Russia - in 2014, a domestic rocket launched 37 satellites into orbit.