The Indian space agency this morning launched a rocket carrying 36 satellites from the Sriharikota spaceport near Chennai. The Launch Vehicle Mark-III rocket lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre as part of the OneWeb India-2 mission.

The launch was carried out from Sriharikota at around nine o'clock on Sunday morning. This is the second commercial launch for OneWeb of the LVM-3, a modified version of India's most powerful launch vehicle, the GSLV Mark Three rocket.

The satellites weighing 5805 kg will be placed in an orbit at an altitude of 450 km above the earth. ISRO successfully put 36 satellites of OneWeb into orbit in the first commercial launch on October 23.

OneWeb, a partnership with India's Bharti Enterprises, is a major project to deploy a network of satellites in geostationary orbit to provide internet services to government departments and private enterprises.

582 satellites have been deployed in space through 17 previous missions. Today's launch brings the number of satellites to 618.

With this, One Web officials announced that the first phase of the project was completed and will start providing internet services worldwide this year itself.