India's space agency ISRO launched a record 104 satellites on a single rocket from the Sriharikota spaceport in Andhra Pradesh today. India has become the first country to successfully carry so many satellites in a single mission. The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle PSLV-C37 is the star of what has been described as an incredible step for the country's space programme.
In 28 minutes, all 104 satellites were successfully placed into the Earth's orbit. 101 of the 104 satellites belong to six foreign countries, including 96 from the U.S. and one each from Israel, the UAE, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Kazakhstan. According to Times of India, "Russian Space Agency held a record of launching 37 satellites in one go during its mission in June 2014. India previously launched 23 satellites in a single mission in June 2015."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by butthurt on Thursday February 16 2017, @04:38AM
Although most of the satellites are very small, they still can track them all.
I would guess that using one vehicle to launch multiple satellites might result in fewer pieces of debris.
An American company I hadn't heard of before, Planet Inc., owns 88 of the satellites, and will be photographing the Earth with them. A commenter on Slashdot posted a link to their site:
https://www.planet.com/markets/defense-and-intelligence/ [planet.com]