Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh:  In its longest and most complex mission, India’s space agency ISRO today launched eight satellites from one rocket into two different orbits. Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted, “Our space scientists keep scripting history.”

The PSLV or 37th Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, carrying three satellites from India, three from Algeria, and one each from Canada and the US, lifted off from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh at 9:12 am.

India’s SCATSAT, meant for ocean and weather forecasts, cyclone detection and tracking, has been placed in orbit. India shares such data with the US, which helped them track Hurricane Sandy in 2012. SCATSAT-1 with a life of five years, would provide weather forecasting services through the generation of wind vector products.

Pratham, a 10-kg satellite developed by students of the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, will study the total electron count in space. The 5.25-kg PISAT made by students of Bengaluru’s PES University will take pictures of earth.

Algeria’s ALSAT-1B is an Earth observation satellite (103 kg), ALSAT-2B is a remote sensing satellite (117 kg) and ALSAT-1N (7 kg) is a technology demonstrator.

The US’ Pathfinder-1 is a commercial high resolution imaging micro satellite while Canada’s NLS-19 is a technology demonstration nano satellite for experimentation in helping to reduce space debris and for tracking commercial aircraft.