ISRO to launch XPoSat on New Year's day

Bengaluru: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is gearing up for its first space mission of 2024 with the launch of the X-ray Polarimeter Satellite (XPoSat) on January 1.

Once launched, India will become the second country in the world to send a specialised astronomy observatory aimed at studying black holes and neutron stars. A second of its kind after NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), XPoSat will be launched on the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. ISRO will launch XPoSat at 9:10 am on Monday from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.

The launch of XPoSat will be streamed live on various social media channels. The historic event can be watched on ISRO’s official website, ISRO’s YouTube channel and Facebook page. Apart from the official pages of ISRO, one can catch the live coverage on DD National TV channel. ISRO aims to launch XPoSat into an eastward low-inclination orbit. The PSLV-C58 will also carry the ‘PSLV Orbital Experimental Module’. An astrophysicist at the IIT Bombay, Dr Varun Bhalerao informed that through this mission, the ISRO aims to “decipher the stellar remnants or corpses of dead stars”. Dr Varun Bhalerao said, “This is only the second mission of its sophisticated class after NASA’s 2021 mission named Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer or IXPE.