The LVM-3 rocket can carry 4,000 kg to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit and 8,000 kg to Low Earth Orbit, thanks to its powerful cryogenic stage.
New Delhi: At exactly 5:26 pm this Sunday evening, the skies above Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh will light up as India’s most powerful rocket thunders into space. The LVM-3 rocket, nicknamed ‘Bahubali’ after the legendary warrior, will carry the country’s heaviest-ever communication satellite for the Indian Navy. This will be the eighth flight of this incredible machine, and every single launch before this has been a complete success.
Standing tall at 43.5 metres, almost like a 15-floor apartment building, the LVM-3 is a giant among rockets. At liftoff, it weighs a staggering 642 tonnes, roughly equal to 150 full-grown Asian elephants standing together. This massive weight is needed because the rocket is carrying something very special: the CMS-03 satellite, weighing 4,400 kg, which will become the heaviest communication satellite India has ever sent to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit. The satellite is so important that it will replace GSAT-7, lovingly called Rukmini, which has been faithfully serving the Indian Navy since 2013.
What makes the LVM-3 truly special is its perfect track record. In 2023, this same rocket successfully carried India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission to the moon, making the entire nation proud. Each LVM-3 costs about 500 crore rupees to build and launch, and its 16-minute journey to space is powered by a completely homegrown cryogenic engine, a technology that only a handful of countries in the world have mastered.
The launch sequence itself is a carefully choreographed dance of power and precision. The moment begins when two massive solid boosters called S200 roar to life together, lifting the rocket off the launch pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre. Just under two minutes later, while these boosters are still burning, the liquid core stage L110 fires up, ensuring there is never a moment without thrust pushing the rocket forward. At 134 seconds, the solid boosters finish their job and two seconds later they separate and fall away. As the rocket climbs to about 115 km altitude during the third minute, the protective nose cone or fairing splits open and drops off, no longer needed in the thin air. At just over five minutes, the liquid core finishes its work and the cryogenic upper stage C25 takes over as the precision driver, placing the satellite exactly where it needs to be. After 16 minutes and 14 seconds of flight, the spacecraft is successfully injected into an orbit stretching from 180 km to 36,000 km above Earth.
But the journey does not end there. Over the next few weeks, the CMS-03 satellite will use its own thrusters to slowly climb higher and higher until it reaches its final home in Geostationary Orbit, about 36,000 km directly above the equator. At this altitude, something magical happens. The satellite moves at exactly the same speed as Earth rotates, making it appear fixed in the sky right above India. From this position, it can continuously watch and communicate with everything happening across the vast ocean areas surrounding India, covering one-third of the planet.
The capabilities of CMS-03 are truly impressive. This is the most advanced Navy communication satellite ISRO has ever built. It can talk in multiple frequency bands and will provide secure communication reaching up to 2,000 km from India’s coastline. This means the Indian Navy can keep a close watch on enemy warships and pirates while maintaining secure, real-time communication between warships, submarines, aircraft, UAVs and helicopters. Commanders at sea will receive clear, high-quality images and video, giving them complete situational awareness to make quick and accurate decisions. The satellite will also strengthen ocean monitoring and improve data sharing between ships and ground stations.
The importance of such satellites was already proven during Operation Sindoor, when the earlier Rukmini satellite helped Indian naval assets work together through network-centric operations, successfully keeping the Pakistan Navy at bay. Now, CMS-03 will take this capability to an entirely new level.
The LVM-3 rocket can carry 4,000 kg to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit and 8,000 kg to Low Earth Orbit, thanks to its powerful cryogenic stage. This versatility was proven during the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022 when the rocket’s name and purpose expanded beyond just geosynchronous missions. When OneWeb, a global satellite internet company, desperately needed launches after Russia stopped helping them and Europe’s rockets were unavailable, India stepped in. The LVM-3 successfully completed two OneWeb missions, carrying more than 5,700 kg of payload and placing 72 satellites into Low Earth Orbit around 450 km above Earth.
While India has sent heavier satellites to space before, like the 5,854 kg GSAT-11 launched in 2018, those missions used foreign rockets. GSAT-11 remains the heaviest satellite ISRO has ever built, and it was launched from French Guiana using Europe’s Ariane-5 rocket. Even last year, ISRO used Elon Musk’s SpaceX to launch the 4,700 kg GSAT-20 satellite. But now, with the LVM-3 proving its strength mission after mission, India is becoming more self-reliant in launching heavy satellites.
The future looks even more exciting. A human-rated version of this same Bahubali rocket will carry Indian astronauts to space as part of the Gaganyaan crewed space mission. The rocket that launches satellites today will soon launch dreams and people tomorrow. As the countdown reaches zero this Sunday evening and the twin boosters ignite, lighting up the coastal sky of Andhra Pradesh, another chapter will be written in India’s remarkable space story, one launch at a time.
——–E.O.M
(Girish Linganna is an award-winning science communicator and a Defence, Aerospace & Geopolitical Analyst. He is the Managing Director of ADD Engineering Components India Pvt. Ltd., a subsidiary of ADD Engineering GmbH, Germany.)
