Take government note , space agencies of the world : India just successfully launched 104 satellites into space via a single rocket launching , vanquish the previous criminal record of 37 set by Russia in 2014 .
Most of the satellites were foreign - owned – the vast majority of which come up from the US Earth - imaging company “ Planet ” – which make believe this launching the country ’s attempt to double the efforts of rising headliner private space companies likeSpaceXand Blue Origin .
The remarkable feat , taking place from Sriharikota outer space center in southerly India , also carry an Indian single-valued function satellite . expert think it will be used to keep a eminent - resolution middle on regional competition , including China and Pakistan .
The entire launch - and - release sequence take just 18 minutes . As note by theNew York Times , the mission was actually fairly high-risk , as each tiny artificial satellite was unleash into space just second before and after the release of another . If the timing or astrodynamics calculations were slightly off , they could have collide into each other or bounce back into the rocket itself .
The Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi pack to Twitter to publicly congratulate the scientist involve in this genuinely breathtaking task .
“ mouth to the Secretary , Department of Space and plume him & the entire team of scientist on today ’s particular achievement , ” he tweeted . “ This remarkable feat by@isrois yet another proud second for our infinite scientific community and the nation . India salutes our scientist . ”
The bulk ( 88 ) of the modest satellites go to the aforementioned individual society out of San Francisco , who hope to sell monitoring data from their constellation – the gravid ever released into orbit around Earth – to way and governments on requirement .
Speaking of which , the hugecommercial investmentin the launch meant that the Native American government ended up footing just half the account ’s launch , which makes India ’s distance explorative efforts a hybrid role model between something like NASA and SpaceX , entirely public and private group , severally .
This is another proud scientific achievement for the quickly developing country . Just in 2014 , India manage to charge a ballistic capsule to Mars – something rival China failed to do two age earlier .
It ’s secure to say that India is becoming nothing unretentive of a major histrion in the contemporary space race . NASA may be hop to take a manned crew to Mars by themid-2030s , but India may not be too far behind such feat in a decade or two .
