ISRO announced to launch ASTROSAT in October 2015

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on 19 May 2015 announced that ASTROSAT will be launched in October 2015 by the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) C-34 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh.

Features of ASTROSAT
• ASTROSAT is the first dedicated Indian space observatory mission aimed at studying distant celestial objects.  

• The mission is capable of performing observations in Ultraviolet (UV), optical, low and high energy X-ray wavebands at the same time.  
• The satellite will be launched to a 650 km near equatorial orbit around the Earth.
• ASTROSAT carries four X-ray payloads, one UV telescope and a charge particle monitor.
• Apart from ISRO, four other Indian institutions, viz., Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) and Raman Research Institute (RRI) are involved in the development of payloads among which two of them were developed in collaboration with Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and University of Leiscester (UoL), UK.

The ISRO also announced that the spacecraft is fully assembled and in the coming days it will undergo several environmental tests like Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) , Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC), Thermal Vacuum, Vibration and Acoustic tests.

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