India launches Earth-observing satellite on 3rd mission of new rocket (video)

India launched an advanced Earth-observing satellite Thursday (Aug. 15), on the third-ever mission of its new SSLV rocket.

The Indian Space Research Organisation 's EOS-08 spacecraft lifted off atop the 112-foot-tall (34 meters) SSLV — short for Small Satellite Launch Vehicle — from Satish Dhawan Space Centre tonight at 11:47 p.m. EDT (0347 GMT or 9:17 a.m. India Standard Time on Aug. 16).

This was the third flight for the SSLV. Its debut, in August 2022, ended in failure: The rocket deployed its two payloads — the EOS-02 Earth-observing satellite and a tiny student-built cubesat — into the wrong orbit, and they fell back to Earth in relatively short order.

The SSLV bounced back on its second flight , which occurred in February 2023. The rocket successfully deployed its three payloads — EOS-07 and two cubesats — into their designated 280-mile-high (450 kilometers) circular orbits.

Related: Facts about ISRO, the Indian Space Research Organisation

On this third flight, the rocket deployed EOS-08 into a circular orbit with an altitude of 295 miles (475 km), according to ISRO. Once fully checked out, the 387-pound (175.5 kilograms) satellite will study Earth with two instruments, the Electro Optical Infrared Payload (EOIR) and the Global Navigation Satellite System-Reflectometry payload (GNSS-R).

EOIR's infrared data will be used "for applications such as satellite-based surveillance, disaster monitoring, environmental monitoring, fire detection, volcanic activity observation and industrial and power plant disaster monitoring," ISRO officials wrote in a mission description .

GNSS-R, meanwhile, will demonstrate the ability to use reflected satellite-navigation signals to detect floods, assess soil moisture and analyze winds over the ocean, among other applications.

EOS-08 also carries an ultraviolet-light dosimeter, which will help characterize the space radiation environment ahead of the Gaganyaan mission , India's first-ever crewed spaceflight, which could launch as soon as 2025.

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EOS-08 is designed to operate for a year in orbit. The spacecraft's work will be groundbreaking, laying the foundation for other Earth-observation satellites down the road, according to ISRO.

"The primary objectives of the EOS-08 mission include designing and developing a microsatellite, creating payload instruments compatible with the microsatellite bus, and incorporating new technologies required for future operational satellites," ISRO officials wrote in the mission description.