ISRO's record breaking rocket launch: Is that a big deal?

 ISRO launched PSLV C37 with 104 satellites from First Launch Pad (FLP) of Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota and this is the largest number of satellites ever launched on a single rocket.

Is this a big achievement for ISRO?

The Answer is NO!

The capacity of a rocket is measured by the ability to lift a payload into orbit. 

Let’s check out the capacity of the top heavy lifter in the world

#1

• The Delta IV Heavy is the highest capacity rocket in the world. It is manufactured by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Space Systems and Boeing Defence, Space & Security.
• It has a total capacity to launch 28,790 kg into low earth orbit. It was in operation science 2001.

#2

• The Proton-M rocket is a Russian heavy-lift launch vehicle derived from the Soviet-developed Proton rocket.
• It has a capacity to lift 28,790 kg into low earth orbit and more than 10,865 kg to geosynchronous transfer orbit. The first Proton-M rocket launched  on 7 April 2001

#3

• Ariane 5 is a heavy-lift launch vehicle of European Space Agency (ESA). It was manufactured by Airbus for ESA.
•  It has a capacity to launch 21,000 kg to low earth orbit and more than 10,000 kg to geosynchronous transfer orbit.
• And a series of rockets like Russia’s Angara A5,  Space-X’s Falcon 9 Full Thrust and China’s Long March 5 (CZ-5).

Let’s come back to the case of PSLV C37 rocket. It lifted 104 satellites,  the total mass of all the satellites is 1378 kg!

The reality is PSLV C-37 is not a heavy lifter like the above satellites. It can only lift very few compared to other heavy lifter rockets.

Watch Video: Watch 104 satellites in 9 slides

Then, Why the world is praising this as ISRO’s greatest achievement?

The answer is there are only three Indian satellites in that batch others are launched as a part of a commercial agreement between ISRO’s commercial arm Antrix Coopration limited.

There are many other commercial satellite launchers in the world. But ISRO is the only one agency can make the mission at a low cost than any other agencies.That is the importance of ISRO over other space agencies

The world’s cheapest Mars Mission (Mars Orbital Mission) was the proof for this. ISRO did this mission at a cost of $74 million.

The main reason for this low-cost missions is the availability of an important resource, called manpower. World class scientists and technicians are available at a comparatively low salary in India.

Our indigenously developed technologies also helped us to achieve this. But the real hero’s are them, our scientists. They made this success.ISRO’s this achievement made the entire space products easily available to the world at a cheap cost.

But, for launching heavy satellites we still need to depend on foreign rockets. We recently found a remedy for this problem we developed GSLV Mk III our new heavy lifter.

Related: 8 Interesting facts about GSLV Mk III

ISRO developed a new heavy lift rocket GSLV Mk III and launched a communication satellite GSAT 9 into geosynchronous transfer orbit. New heavy lifter rocket has a capacity to launch 4000 kg to GTO and 8000 kg to LEO.