Satish Dhawan Space Centre
Indian space launch site in Andhra Pradesh
Satish Dhawan Space Centre – SDSC (formerly Sriharikota Range – SHAR) is the primary spaceport of ISRO, located in Sriharikota, an island in Tirupati district of Andhra Pradesh, India. The spaceport is located on an island off the east coast of India, surrounded by Pulicat Lake and the Bay of Bengal. The distance of Sriharikota from Chennai is 105 km (65 mi) and from Nellore is 119 km (74mi).
The centre currently has three functioning launch pads used for launching sounding rockets, polar satellites and geosynchronous satellites. India's Lunar exploration probes Chandrayaan-1, Chandrayaan-2, Chandrayaan-3, Mars Orbiter Mission, solar research mission Aditya-L1 and space observatory XPoSat were also launched from SDSC.
Originally called Sriharikota Range (SHAR), the centre was renamed on 5 September 2002 as a tribute to ISRO's former chairman Satish Dhawan with retaining its original acronym and is referred as SDSC-SHAR.
History
Sriharikota island was chosen in 1969 for a satellite launching station. It is located 80 km (50 mi) north of Chennai. The centre became operational on 9 October 1971 when an RH-125 sounding rocket was launched. The first attempted launch of an orbital satellite, Rohini 1A aboard a Satellite Launch Vehicle, took place on 10 August 1979, but due to a failure in thrust vectoring of the rocket's second stage, the satellite's orbit decayed on 19 August 1979. SHAR was named as 'Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR' (SDSC), on 5 September 2002, in memory of Satish Dhawan, former chairman of the ISRO.
The SHAR facility now consists of two launch pads, with the second built in 2005. The second launch pad was used for launches beginning in 2005 and is a universal launch pad, accommodating all of the launch vehicles used by ISRO. The two launch pads will allow multiple launches in a single year, which was not possible earlier.
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