PSLV is undoubtedly among the cheapest launch vehicles (the cost includes that of PSLV-XL variant, other variants are even cheaper). The launch contracts are usually negotiated according to price per kg of payload to the orbit. Given that the estimated value of the space industry today is around ~$200 billion, ISRO should charge higher price for foreign country satellites it launches through its subsidiary Antrix. ISRO is the jewel in the crown for India and congratulations to all those wonderful scientists who are making India proud.
Wish the 11th President of India Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam were here to witness this! He was the project director of India's first Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV-III) which successfully deployed the Rohini satellite in near-earth orbit in July 1980. Between the 1970's and 1990's, Dr. Kalam made an effort to develop the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and SLV-III projects, both of which proved to be successful.
Oh that's cool! Although not AI, just a script "when met post this" sort of thing but awesome non-the-less. Too bad you can't get access to them "Hey, if you happen to pass over this person's house, take a picture" haha. Awesome though. Would be cool to see a readout of real-time sensor data.
One of the challenges is to pack all those satellites in launch vehicle's payload adapter. The payload adapter on launch vehicle needs to be flexible enough to allow such varying number of payloads. In this mission, ISRO had to realize a new/modified payload adapter to carry those 104 satellites.
Next is to accurately inject all those satellites - either into their respective orbits if it's a multi-orbit mission, or with sufficient time gap and re-orientation between injections if it's a single-orbit mission.
This was a single orbit mission (all sats released into SSO). So, PSLV's 4th stage had to time those 104 satellite injections. It also need to re-orient itself for each injection depending on satellite's requirement. This mission had as many as 103 "separation events". All this logic is pre-programmed and executed by launch vehicle's onboard computer.
The hardest part is in ensuring that the satellites are launched in different directions to avoid them colliding when being deployed in orbit. These satellites have to be in the same orbit but with increasing distance between them.
However, the sole idea behind deploying 104 satellites is not to create a record of some sort but to utilize the maximum capacity of the workhorse rocket (PSLV). This results in greater ROI for the Space Agencies (Antrix / ISRO) as most of these 104 satellites (101 I think) were foreign satellites.
> the sole idea behind deploying 104 satellites is not to create a record of some sort but to utilize the maximum capacity of the workhorse rocket (PSLV).
+1. The PSLV is one of the world's most reliable launch vehicles. It has been in service for over 20 years.
Out of the total 104 satellites, 101 satellites belong to six foreign countries. They include 96 from the US and one each from Israel, the UAE, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Kazakhstan.
Satellites are expensive, people rarely deploy them for fun. If an existing satellite offered the same functionality people would likely license data/airtime/what-have-you from the operator of that satellite rather than launching their own.
As long as their orbital information is properly registered and they have a proper end-of-life plan for them there's little risk in deploying new satellites; if you want to get concerned about crowding the orbits, China deliberately blowing up a satellite a couple of years ago was much more problematic.
a) Cartosat 2 Series - primary payload.
b) 88xDove (88x3U CubeSats) - 22 QuadPack deployers.
c) 8xLEMUR (8x3U CubeSats) - 2 QuadPack deployers.
d) BGUSat (3U CubeSat), PEASSS (3U CubeSat), DIDO-2 (3U CubeSat), Al-Farabi-1 (2U CubeSat), and Nayif-1 (1U CubeSat) - 1 QuadPack deployer.
e) INS-1A and INS-1B are not in CubeSat format. So, they need to be mounted separately on payload adapter.
So, 1 primary payload + 25 QuadPack deployers + 2 nano-sats in total.
Pics of Quadpacks at: https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/02/14/indian-rocket-set-to-p...