India akan luncurkan pemburu asteroid

Moskow (ANTARA News) - Roket PSLV India yang membawa pesawat pemburu asteroid Kanada dan enam satelit lain akan lepas landas dari Pusat Antariksa Satish Dhawan pada Senin. Satelit mikro pemburu asteroid NEOSSat, yang besarnya sekira satu koper dan berbobot 160 pound atau sekitar 72,5 kilogram, dilengkapi dengan teleskop yang cukup peka untuk mendeteksi benda redup.

Satelit yang didanai bersama oleh Badan Antariksa Kanada serta Riset dan Pengembangan Pertahanan Kanada itu akan mengumpulkan sampai 288 gambar per hari, dan pada akhirnya meliputi seluruh langit. "Kami percaya bahwa jika berhasil, proyek ini akan memberikan ilmu yang luar biasa," kata Guennadi Kroupnik, Direktur Komunikasi Satelit dan Proyek Lingkungan Antariksa di Badan Antariksa Kanada seperti dikutip laman Spaceflight.now. "Ini akan membantu dan memantau asteroid serta komet di bagian dalam tata surya, di mana terdapat banyak tantangan untuk pengamatan dari Bumi," katanya seperti dikutip RIA Novosti. Roket Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C20) tingginya 44,4 meter dengan masa lepas landas 229,7 metrik ton. Muatan utama roket adalah satelit Saral Indo-French seberat 407 kilogram yang dimaksudkan untuk pengkajian kelautan.

Selain Saral dan NEOSSat, perangkat itu mengorbitkan lima satelit lain yakni dua mikro-satelit UniBrite dan BRITE Austria, satelit AAUSAT3 yang dibangun oleh mahasiswa di Denmark, Strand-sebuah satelit kecil dari Inggris-- dan satelit mini dari Kanada, SAPPHIRE.

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Four small satellites - two of which are Canadian-owned and another two developed in Canada but paid for by the government of Austria -- were successfully loftedinto orbit Monday atop an Indian rocket. The rocket blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India, at 6:01 p.m. local time, 7:31 a.m. ET.

The Canadian content included:

• NEOSSat, a joint project of the Canadian Space Agency and Defence Research and Development Canada. Its mission includes searching for asteroids on trajectories that bring them closer to the Sun than Earth. Such objects are typically difficult to spot with ground-based telescopes because of their positions on the sky relative to the Sun. It will also be used to track satellites in orbit around Earth.
  
• Sapphire, Canada’s first operational military satellite. It will conduct what the Department of National Defence calls “space situation awareness”, precision tracking of satellite and debris orbiting between 6,000 and 40,000 kilometres from Earth.
  
• Two toaster-sized “nanosatellites” that will measure tiny changes in the brightness and temperature of some of the brightest stars in the sky. They are part of the BRITE project, which will eventually include six satellites, two each from Austria, Canada and Poland. The Canadian-funded pair is expected to launch aboard a Ukrainian-Russian Dnepr rocket next year.
  

“We had first contact with NEOSSat at 8:39 EST this morning,” Canadian Space Agency spokesperson Julie Simard enthused. “The status of the satellite is nominal.”

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