In yet another successful mission for both ISRO and its workhorse rocket — the PSLV — the Indian space agency has successfully placed two satellites, the Kalamsat and Microsat-R into their respective orbits. The former of these two is a student satellite while the later is an imaging satellite.
The two satellites were aboard a PSLV rocket, named PSLV-C44 in the current mission. PSLV is a four stage launch vehicle with alternating solid and liquid stages. The PSLV with 2 strap-on configuration has been identified for this mission and the configuration is designated as PSLV-DL. What makes this mission stand apart form the previous ones, is the fact that PSLV-C44 is the first mission of PSLV-DL configuration. The DL configuration is a new variant to the increasing number of offerings that ISRO has to offer via PSLC.
In PSLV-C44, the fourth stage (PS4) of the vehicle will be moved to higher circular orbit so as to establish an orbital platform for carrying out experiments. Kalamsat, a student payload will be the first to use PS4 as orbital platform.
