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The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully launched India’s heaviest CMS-03 satellite on Sunday, with experts calling it a “perfect injection”. The satellite, weighing about 4400kg, is the heaviest communication satellite to be launched to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) from Indian soil.

Announcing the success of the mission, ISRO Chief V Narayanan congratulated the team on the successful launch despite challenging weather.

“The CMS-03 satellite is a multi-band communication satellite with coverage over a wide oceanic region, including the Indian landmass, and is designed for providing communication services for at least 15 years. The satellite incorporates a host of new technologies and yet another shiny example of Atmanirbhar Bharat,” the ISRO chairman said.

ISRO chief said the mission also saw the success of another experiment, the indigenously developed C-25 cryogenic stage. “For the first time, we have, after successfully injecting the satellite into orbit and reorienting the stage, successfully ignited the thrust chamber. This is going to be a great experiment, which is going to feed data for restarting the cryogenic stage in future for enabling the mission flexibility for placing multiple satellites in various orbits using the  Bahubali rocket  LVM-3,” ANI reported quoting the ISRO chief.

After the 24-hour countdown concluded, the 43.5 metre tall rocket soared into the skies at the prefixed time of 5.26pm from the second launch pad at this spaceport.

Union Minister Jitendra Singh congratulated ISRO on the successful launch. “Kudos Team #ISRO! India’s #Bahubali scales the skies, with the successful launch of #LVM3M5 Mission!” Singh tweeted, adding, “ISRO continues to script one success after another.”