The joint launch of Indian-French satellite SARAL and various Canadian defense satellites has been suspended by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) once again. In a statement released by ISRO on January 4, the space agency said that the initially planned launch on January 12 was moved to mid-February because of a thermo-vacuum testing issue that ensued with the SARAL satellite, which is the fundamental payload of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) C20 launch.
Meanwhile, the Canadian satellites are part of a supplementary payload that includes the NEOSSat space telescope, which functions as a seeker of near-Earth asteroids, and the dedicated military satellite Sapphire, which will upgrade the Canadian Department of National Defense’s (DND) surveillance capabilities.
The Canadian built CanX-3b (TUGSAT-1) and CanX-3a (also known as UniBRITE) nanosatellites are also going to be launched on the PSLV-C20 rocket. Both nanosatellites were created by the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies Space Flight Laboratory.
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