Our team is just arriving in India for our next launch! We’re happy that the cadence of PSLV launches has resumed after some lighter-than-normal pandemic years. The PSLV is a terrific launch vehicle (LV) for many of our customers, and we’ve taken many payloads to orbit on it. 

In fact, because it has been such a workhorse in our stable of LVs, we are planning to execute  our fastest integration campaign ever. It will be only about ONE WEEK from the time our team left for India to the mating of our payloads onto the launch vehicle.

Clearly, with experience comes efficiency. 

A typical integration campaign can run two to three weeks on the ground at the launch facility. It’s obviously a costly endeavor for customers who need to send a whole team and need our team there to work through processes that can’t be done remotely. But when your team is familiar with the integration processes for the vehicle and have already learned how things work at that facility, everything goes more smoothly.

In addition to a streamlined integration campaign due to “boots on the ground” knowledge, it’s been a fast process since manifesting. It’s been less than six months from signing the launch agreement with our customer to leaving for the integration campaign. It helps that our customer Astrocast is a long-time customer and “frequent flyer.” They too, know the ropes of launch. This mission will grow their constellation to serve the Internet of Things (IoT), allowing access in remote parts of the world. 

Sean Stoker, Spaceflight’s Director, Mission Management will be leading the team for the PSLV-C54 integration campaign.  “We’re excited to work with NSIL on this next launch to grow the Astrocast constellation. It’s always great to be working with one of our many global launch vehicle partners and such terrific customers..”