IRNSS-1H

•  India’s attempt to launch its eighth regional navigation satellite has failed. The satellite IRNSS-1H didn’t come out of the heat shield as it should have, though the rocket’s lift off was as planned.
• A satellite navigation is based on a network of satellites that transmit radio signals to determine the geospatial location of the receivers with high accuracy. The satellite systems can be used for providing position, navigation or for tracking the position of something fitted with a receiver.
• IRNSS-1H was being sent to space to back up — and mostly replace — the functions of India's first navigation satellite. IRNSS-1A was launched four years back.
• Between 2013 and 2016, ISRO put up seven IRNSS satellites to form the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System, since called NavIC or Navigation with Indian Constellation.
• NavIC is the Indian regional version similar to the U.S. Global Positioning System GPS. It will drive all position-based activities on ground, sea and air, by giving near accurate location details of persons or objects. It will be used for military, commercial and common everyday uses.

What is a heat shield?

• A heat shield is an encasement which protects the satellite in the rocket from ultra-high temperatures, acoustic pressures that the spacecraft experiences while travelling in the Earth’s atmosphere, an article in the Indian Express said.
• In space shuttles, the heat shield must protect the crew capsule and its precious astronaut crew from temperatures that can melt metal. These ultra-high temperatures result from friction between the air and the speeding spacecraft, according to NASA.

Heat shield separation and satellite

• Pressures decrease once the spacecraft is outside Earth’s atmosphere, allowing the heat shield to separate in the fourth phase of the launch.
• After the heat shield failed to separate, the IRNSS-1H satellite could not be released into the orbit.
• The eighth satellite was a replacement for IRNSS-1A, one of the seven satellites in India’s navigation satellite constellation, as its three rubidium atomic clocks on board had stopped functioning. It was also the first time the private sector was actively involved in assembling and testing of a satellite.

By: Vishal