The Indian Space Agency said that it is set to launch a weather satellite, the INSAT-3DS, on Saturday at 5:35 pm from Sriharikota's Andhra Pradesh on board a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), also dubbed as the "Naughty Boy" by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
The GSLV has a failure rate of 40 percent: 6 of its 15 flights have failed. The last GSLV launch, on 29 May 2023, was successful.
The GSLV is a three-stage rocket that is 51.7 meters long, has a lift-off weight of 420 tonnes, and uses an India-made cryogenic engine.
Speaking with media, ISRO officials said that the new weather monitoring satellite will enhance meteorological observations and monitoring of land and ocean surfaces for weather forecasting and disaster warning.
"Indian weather satellites have been a game changer. Satellites are truly the eyes in the sky that have helped India forecast cyclones with great precision", said Dr M Ravichandran, secretary of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, told a reporter.
The INSAT-3D has been operational since 2013; its lifetime is about to be complete; hence, the ISRO is required to launch a weather satellite that can replace it.
"For a tropical country like India where high-impact convective events are very common, it is necessary to have good quality, high-density observations both on the spatial and temporal scale", Dr Ashim Kumar Mitra, project director of the Satellite Meteorology Division, India Meteorological Department (IMD), told Indian media, explaining how weather satellites give data for forecasts.