SRIHARIKOTA, India, Dec 24 — The Indian Space Research Organisation on Wednesday successfully launched its heaviest foreign satellite from Indian soil, placing the 6,100-kg BlueBird Block-2 communications satellite into low Earth orbit aboard the LVM3-M6 rocket.
The mission marked the sixth operational flight of LVM3 and a major commercial milestone for ISRO. The satellite belongs to AST SpaceMobile of the United States and is designed to provide space-based cellular broadband connectivity directly to standard mobile smartphones.
“This mission demonstrates LVM3’s capability to deploy large-class commercial satellites into low Earth orbit,” ISRO said in a statement following the launch.
LVM3-M6 lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre and successfully injected the satellite into its intended orbit. ISRO said BlueBird Block-2 is the largest commercial communications satellite so far deployed in low Earth orbit using an Indian launch vehicle.
The LVM3 rocket is a three-stage launch vehicle consisting of two solid strap-on motors (S200), a liquid core stage (L110) and a cryogenic upper stage (C25). The vehicle has previously been used to launch Chandrayaan-2, Chandrayaan-3, and two OneWeb missions carrying 72 satellites.
The previous LVM3 launch, the LVM3-M5/CMS-03 mission, was successfully completed on Nov. 2.
