ISRO undertakes a commercial launch for Singapore

financialexpress.com:

Dr Ajey Lele

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully launched seven satellites in low earth orbit (LEO) on July 30 2023. This PSLV-C56 mission was configured in its core-alone mode. The core alone mode for PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) indicates that the vehicle was without any strap-on motors. Such a version of PSLV is used when very less payload is carried during this mission. The main satellite DS-SAR is a 360 kg bird and other six satellites are very small with some in nano category. It is expected that the total weight carried could be less than 500 kg. This was the 58th flight of PSLV and 17th flight of PSLV in Core Alone configuration.

This was a dedicated commercial mission of NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) for ST Engineering, Singapore. The main payload, DS-SAR satellite, is a Radar Imaging Earth Observation satellite. The other six co-passenger customer satellites also belong to Singapore. All satellites were injected into a 535 km circular with 5 deg orbital inclination. In recent times, ISRO has increased its commercial activities significantly and this launch should be viewed as a part of this effort. 

During March 2019, the Indian government established New Space India Limited (NSIL). This is a Central Public Sector Enterprise (CPSE) under the administrative control of the Department of Space (DoS). This organisation has been established for commercially exploiting the research and development (R & D) work of ISRO. Here the purpose is to commercially exploit the emerging global space market. The PSLV systems used for such commercial launches, have been built by Indian industry with technology assistance from ISRO. 

Recently, on a commercial basis NSIL has successfully undertaken two