Duchifat 3: Satellite built by Israeli school students to be launched by ISRO’s PSLV C48

Three youngsters Alon Abramovich, Meitav Assulin and Shmuel Aviv Levi, all 17 to 18 years old from Sha’ar HaNegev High school in Israel’s southern region will be traveling to India to launch a satellite dubbed as- ‘Duchifat 3’, designed and built by them aboard PSLV C48 from Sriharikota launch site of ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) on 11 December 2019.

Besides Duchifat 3, the PSLV C48 will carry place India’s RISAT-2BR1 and 8 other foreign satellites as payload. India was chosen for the launch because of success enjoyed by country’s space programme and also because of close relations between the two countries.

About Duchifat 3 Satellite

It is a remote sensing and photo satellite which will be used for ecological research of Earth from space. It is designed to serve children from across the country to carry experiment through Earth observation. It is the third in the series of Israeli student-made satellites. The size of satellite is 10x10x30 cm (3U) and it weighs 2.3 kg. The satellite is a platform for ecological studies such as air pollution, water source pollution, forest monitoring, and more and will also be of good help to agriculturists. It has been jointly built by Herzliya Science Center and Sha’ar HaNegev High School students, who have worked for almost two and a half years to build it.

About Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV)-C48

PSLV is an expendable medium-lift launch vehicle. It is designed and operated by ISRO. The PSLV-C48 will blast off from launch pad at Sriharikota rocket port, Andhra Pradesh. It will place RISAT-2BR1, a radar imaging earth observation satellite, having a life of five years, into an orbit of 576 km. Besides RISAT-2BR1, other payload includes 9 foreign satellites- from, Israel (remote sensing Duchifat-3), Italy (search and rescue Tyvak-0092), Japan (QPS-SAR – a radar imaging earth observation satellite) and USA (multi-mission Lemur-4 satellites, earth imaging 1HOPSAT, technology demonstration Tyvak-0129). These international customer satellites are being launched under a commercial arrangement with NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) under Department of Space.

Month: Current Affairs - December, 2019