Yesterday evening, even as the temptation to watch the Women’s Cricket World Cup Final match played between the host country India and South Africa at the DY Patil Sports stadium in Mumbai, I had to make a choice between watching the cricket match and the ISRO Launch. The Indian team was put in to bat, after losing the toss, by South Africa, and they began their innings with a bang with a century opening partnership. However, notwithstanding the temptation to continue to watch Cricket, I chose to watch the live launch of the ISRO LVM3-M5.
I was one among millions of Indians, watching live, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully launch its advanced communication satellite CMS-03 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. With the count of zero the Bahubali heavy lift rocket, LVM3-M5 (5th operational flight LVM3-M5) rose to the sky spewing plumes of controlled fire and smoke to the cheers of audience, including school children, who had assembled in large numbers at the launch station at Sriharikota. LVM3-M5 carried on board CMS-03 (also referred to as GSAT-7R) communication satellite, weighing 4410kg, the heaviest communication satellite from the Indian soil, which was successfully launched and placed in an intended Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO). The GSAT-7R is a multi-band communication satellite that will provide services to our Indian Navy over a wide oceanic region, including the Indian landmass.
The Launch Vehicle Mark-3 (LVM3), fondly
called “Bahubali,” is India’s most powerful rocket. It stands more than 40
metres tall and weighs close to 640 tonnes at liftoff — roughly the mass of a
fully loaded jumbo jet. It is noteworthy to
recall that in the previous mission, LVM3 had successfully completed the prestigious
Chandrayaan-3 mission, where in, India became the first country to soft land its
Vikram Lander and Pragya Rower, near the lunar south pole.
I had doubts whether the launch date will be rescheduled in wake of
the aftermath of Cyclone Montha,
which had made landfall near Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh, around October
28-29, 2025. I was therefore, not sure if the weather was
suitable for the ISRO launch. But fortunately, ISRO kept their schedule and the
rest is now history. ISRO Chairman, in his post successful launch address to
the nation and his team, did speak about their apprehension on the aftermath of
the Cyclone, which they carefully examined and decided to go ahead with the
launch. The success therefore becomes that much more important that it endeared
challenges to place GSAT-7R into its intended transfer orbit.
From the Indian context, historically,
satellites above 4 tonnes required foreign launches; However, yesterday the LVM3-M5
demonstrated its capacity to reduce India’s dependence on external launch
markets. This success will accentuate India’s sovereign capacity to develop complex
communications infrastructure for civil and defence purpose. ISRO’s public
mission statement and contemporaneous reporting emphasise that CMS-03 is the
heaviest communication satellite yet launched to GTO from India, and that this
mission strengthens both maritime and national communications.
The LVM 3
is a three stages rocket with three types of propulsion. It is a compact
demonstration of propulsion diversity: two very large solid strap-on boosters
(S200), a liquid-fuelled core (L110) and a cryogenic upper stage (C25) powered
by the CE-20 engine. Each stage solves a different engineering problem. The S200
strapons (first stage boosters) are massive solid motors — among the largest in
the world — carrying ~200 tonnes of composite solid propellant each delivering
an enormous initial thrust pulse to clear dense atmosphere and quickly gain
altitude and momentum. The two S200s ignited at lift off and burnt for roughly
two minutes before separation. The second stage included the L110 liquid core,
which is a liquid stage built around twin Vikas engines burning storable
hypergolic propellants and nitrogen tetroxide variants in various
configurations. The L110 provides throttleable thrust and control during the
trans-atmospheric portion of flight; its ignition is timed to complement the
S200 burn so that the vehicle enjoys continuous thrust as the boosters drop
away. The third stage of the rocket is the C25 cryogenic. The
high-efficiency CE-20 cryogenic engine uses liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen
and is optimized for high specific impulse — the most fuel-efficient chemical
propulsion for vacuum operations. The C25’s long, controlled burn is used to
inject heavy payloads into the high-energy transfer orbit needed for subsequent
orbit-raising by the spacecraft itself. Notably, this mission included a CE-20
reignition test to refine the injection — a delicate manoeuvres that underscores
both engine reliability and flight-software precision, which was highlighted by
ISRO Chairman and other ISRO Centre Directors in their post launch address.
Addressing the nation ISRO Chairman reported that the GSAT 7R Satellite has been successfully inducted in the sub-GTO parking ellipse path of roughly 170 km × 29,970 km (perigee × apogee), from which the satellite will perform autonomous orbit-raising manoeuvres to reach a circular geostationary slot near ~36,000 km altitude. Over the coming days to weeks the ISRO will help the satellites on board propulsion system to execute perigee-raising and apogee-circularisation burns under the control of ISRO’s Master Control Facility (MCF) and mission operations. These phasing burns take advantage of the vehicle’s orbital mechanics: small, well-timed impulses at perigee or apogee until the orbit is circularised at the planned geostationary altitude at around 36000 Km.
Ground-segment, tracking, and mission control
The very sight of the rocket launch is a memorable experience, no matter how many times we witness it. The launch site with rows of monitoring scientists with computers and the large screen which shows the path of the rocket in flight is made visible by ISRO’s Telemetry. The Tracking and Command network (ISTRAC) — a distributed constellation of ground stations — provides continuous tracking and telemetry of the rocket from lift-off to spacecraft separation. Stations at Sriharikota, Port Blair, Thiruvananthapuram, Mauritius, Brunei and Biak (Indonesia), and the Mission Operations Complex in Bengaluru are part of the long-standing TTC architecture that monitors the vehicle’s health and sends telecommands as required. Once the satellite separates, the Master Control Facility at Hassan (and the MCF node at Bhopal) assumes command responsibility for early orbit operations, payload health checks, solar array deployments and the initial orbit-raising burns.
The satellite: multiband payload and operational significance
CMS-03 (GSAT-7R) is a purpose-built, multi-band communications satellite for the Indian Navy and national stakeholders. ISRO brief describes that the satellite is capable of providing UHF, S, C and Ku-band services. Those bands together support secure voice, high-data-rate video and encrypted command-and-control links between ships, aircraft, submarines (surface ships use UHF/S bands to reach submerged platforms via relays) and shore centres. The satellite’s stated operational life is roughly 15 years — a typical design life that balances fuel margin, orbital perturbation management and payload degradation. Over that window, the satellite will underpin network-centric naval operations, maritime domain awareness, and high-capacity data links for civil and strategic users across the Indian Ocean Region.
Voices from the control room and the strategic horizon
From the Mission Control Centre, ISRO Chairman V. Narayanan hailed the “precise injection” and noted the vehicle’s performance was textbook — language that captures the twin facts of engineering exactitude and institutional confidence. ISRO mission leadership also highlighted the successful reignition of the cryogenic upper stage — a non-trivial capability that pays dividends for complex trajectories and future human missions. ISRO has explicitly linked LVM3’s maturation to the Gaganyaan human-spaceflight programme: the same family of technologies, scaled and certified for crew safety, form the engineering backbone of India’s next frontier in human spaceflight.
What this means for the next decade and a half, technically, the mission confirms LVM3’s capacity to loft heavier payloads to GTO, easing constraints on spacecraft designers. Operationally, CMS-03 immediately augments India’s maritime communications and, over the medium term (years) enhances interoperability with other national assets. Strategically, this is an incremental but clear signal: sovereign launch capability for heavy defence and dual-use satellites reduces external dependency and accelerates India’s space-enabled resilience.
India's forthcoming
space missions encompass lunar sample return, a domestic space station
architecture and crewed flights, each of which needs exacting standards of “rocket
science” precision and yesterday’s success of the LVM3-M5 positioning the GSAT-7R into its intended Geostationary
Transfer Orbit (GTO) augurs well for ISRO's future mission.
May ISRO continue to make the nation proud and unite the nation as Cricket does, when we celebrate as one nation, one people, whenever we win tournaments, like the one that the Indian Women’s team which won the World Cup yesterday
Jai
Jawan, Jai Kisan and Jai Vigyan
Jai Hind
