Virgin Galactic spaceship Unity carrying a crew of four, including British billionaire Richard Branson, dabbled into space and returned to Earth safely, a live stream of the event showed on Sunday.
Aeronautical engineer Sirisha Bandla on Sunday became the third Indian-American woman to fly into space when she joined British billionaire Richard Branson on Virgin Galactic's first fully-crewed successful suborbital test flight from the United States state of New Mexico.
Bandla, a 34-year-old aeronautical engineer, on Sunday joined British billionaire Richard Branson and four others on board Virgin Galactic's Spaceship Two Unity to make a journey to the edge of space from the US state of New Mexico
It also carries equipment for meteorological data relay and satellite based search and rescue services being provided by earlier INSAT satellites.
ISRO Chairman K Sivan described the GSAT-11 as the "richest space asset" for India.
GSAT-18, which aims at providing telecommunications services for the country by strengthening ISRO's current fleet of 14 operational telecom satellites, was launched into a Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit about 32 minutes after the lift-off.
Other than the Cartosat-2 series satellite, the PSLV is carrying 29 nano satellites from 14 countries - Austria, Belgium, Chile, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, the United Kingdom and the United States of America besides a nano satellite from India.
A nation that aspires to be a superpower and wants to join the ranks of global leaders in knowledge, science and technology should declare an all out war on ills like superstition and black magic at all levels, says Dinesh C Sharma.
