SATISH DHAWAN SPACE CENTRE SHAR - SPACEPORT OF INDIA

摘要

The Indian spaceport located at Satish Dhawan Space Centre, SDSC SHAR, about 80 km north of the city of Chennai is ideally situated on the Eastern coast of India. Established in early seventies, this launch complex has so far conducted more than 1500 rocket launchings and 18 satellite missions, which include PSLV and GSLV launches also. Located closer to equator, this provides the next best inclination after Kourou for land-based GTO launches. With a view to provide redundancy to the existing pad which caters for PSLV and GSLV launches, a second launch pad has been built from which the operational launches are expected to commence from this year end. This pad has adopted the Integrate-Transfer-Launch (ITL) concept providing very less pad occupancy time and quick turn-around between launches. The other uniqueness of this new launch pad is that it can serve all the future needs with minor modifications. This paper provides a glimpse of the SHAR spaceport and the future possibilities.