Chennai: As the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is gearing up for mega launches including Chandrayaan, Gaganyaan and Indo-US Nissar Mission, besides sedning country’s first Astronaut to International Space Station (ISS) on board Axiom-4 mission, the Space Agency looked back with pride its ahievements made in 2024.
In an update on its website, ISRO said there were five launches from the spaceport
of Sriharikota that proved successful that included precise injection of eight Indian
spacecrafts, one foreign satellite and six rocket bodies, including POEM 3 and 4.
They included PSLV-C58/XPoSat, PSLV-C59/PROBA-3, PSLV-C60/SPADEX docking experimental mission, GSLV-F14/INSAT-3DS, and SSLV-D3/EOS-08 mission, all of them successfullyinjected the payloads in their designated orbits.
ISRO’s GSAT-20 was launched by Falcon-9 Block 5 of SpaceX from Cape Canaveral. TSAT-1A was also launched by Falcon-9.
“Consequently, a total of 8 Indian satellites, 1 foreign satellite, and 6 rocket bodies (including POEM-3 and POEM-4) were placed in their intended orbits”, It said reflecting back on its achievements of 2024.
It said a total of 136 Indian spacecraft, including those from private operators/academic
institutions, were launched in Earth-orbit till December 31, 2024.
As of that date, the number of operational satellites owned by the Indian government is
22 in LEO (Low Earth Orbit) and 31 in GEO (Geo-synchronous Earth Orbit).
In addition, two Indian deep space missions, namely, Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter (CH2O)
and Aditya-L1 at Sun-Earth Lagrange’s point were also active.
The propulsion module of Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft continued to operate in a high
Earth orbit (more than 1 lakh km away) after being relocated from its lunar orbit since
November 2023.
ISRO Chairman Dr. V. Narayanan, releasing the Indian Space Situational Assessment
Report (ISSAR) for 2024 compiled by ISRO System for Safe and Sustainable Space
Operations Management (IS4OM), said the upper stage of PSLV-C3 underwent an
accidental break-up in 2001 and generated 371 debris.
While most of these fragments have re-entered the atmosphere, 41 PSLV-C3 debris
were still in orbit by the end of 2024.
On Atmospheric re-entry, it said among the intact Indian upper stages, 34 rocket bodies
re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere till 2024 end, and five of such re-entries took place in
2024.
All LVM3 rocket bodies have decayed, only the one from LVM3 M2 OneWeb India- mission
remain in orbit.
Among GSLV rocket bodies, only GSLV-F12 and GSLV-F14 rocket bodies are in orbit.
A total of 31 Indian satellites have re-entered the atmosphere till the end of 2024.
In the year 2024 alone, 9 Indian satellites re-entered the atmosphere. Among them was
Cartosat-2 which re-entered the atmosphere on February 14, 2024, the first-ever LEO
satellite of ISRO to be de-orbited at end-of-life to reduce its post-mission orbital life from
more than 30 to less than 4 years.
