104 Satellites to Orbit

Indian Rocket Launch to Carry a Record-Breaking 104 Satellites to Orbit

Eighty-eight of those 104 satellites will help makeup the most extensive network of Earth-imaging sats ever deployed.

By Avery Thompson

Tonight, a rocket will carry a record-breaking 104 satellites into orbit. The Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) will blast off from Sriharikota, India at approximately 10:58 p.m. Eastern time.

Most of the satellites being launched are small cubesats, less than a foot wide, and 88 were built by imaging company Planet. The "Dove" satellites will be used to continually photograph the Earth at high resolutions, similar to Google Earth. These satellites will join 50 already in orbit, where they will photograph all the major landmasses on Earth daily—approximately 58 million square miles.

Planet hopes to sell this imaging technology to all sorts of people, including governments and corporations. The daily imaging data could be used by farmers to estimate crop yields, relief workers to respond to natural disasters, and private companies looking to purchase data aquired through the widespread Earth imaging.

One of Planet's Dove imaging cubesats.

Planet

Planet just purchased another small satellite company, Terra Bella, from Google this past month, according to Wired. Terra Bella came with seven satellites already in orbit, each with four to six times the imaging resolution of the Dove satellites. When one of Planet's network of Dove satellites identifies a target for imaging—such as changes in water levels or the movement of military forces—the company can point one of the bigger Terra Bella satellites at the target for a higher resolution image. With the launch of 88 new Dove satellites tonight, Planet is quickly becoming the premier company in providing Earth imaging data from space.

In addition to the 88 Planet satellites, the PSLV rocket is also launching 15 additional small satellites from many international partners, including two NASA navigational satellites, an Israeli cubesat from Ben Gurion University, an experimental satellite from the EU that will test new methods of power generation in space, and the first ever cubesat from the UAE. The main payload of the rocket is the Indian Cartosat 2D, a cartography satellite designed to accurately map the Earth's geography.

Because the Cartosat is the rocket's main payload, it will be deployed into its orbit first, with the remaining satellites deployed after in a timed sequence. If the launch goes smoothly and all the satellites are successfully deployed, India's PSLV rocket will snatch the title for most satellites ever launched at one time.