Achieving Significant Milestones - Indian Space Programme
The successful launching of Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C9) on April 28, 2008 putting ten satellites, viz., CARTOSAT-2A, Indian Mini Satellite (IMS-1) and eight nano-satellites from abroad into the orbit has given the country a coveted status among space faring nations. In its twelve consecutively successful flights so far, PSLV has repeatedly proved itself as a reliable and versatile workhorse launch vehicle. It has demonstrated multiple satellite launch capability having launched a total of sixteen satellites for international customers besides thirteen Indian payloads, which are for remote sensing, amateur radio communications and Space capsule Recovery Experiment (SRE-1). PSLV was used to launch ISRO’s exclusive meteorological satellite, KALPANA-1, into a Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) in September 2002 and thus proved its versatility.
CARTOSAT-2A is a state-of-the art remote sensing satellite with a spatial resolution of better than one metre and swath of 9.6 km. The satellite carries a panchromatic camera (PAN) capable of taking black-and-white pictures in the visible region of electromagnetic spectrum. The highly agile CARTOSAT-2A is steerable along as well as across the direction of its movement to facilitate imaging of any area more frequently. High-resolution data from CARTOSAT-2A will be invaluable in urban and rural development applications calling for large scale mapping.
Indian Mini Satellite (IMS-1), flown as an auxiliary payload weighing 83 Kg at lift-off, incorporates many new technologies and has miniaturised subsystems. IMS-1 carries two remote sensing payloads – a Multi-spectral camera (Mx Payload) and a Hyper-spectral camera (HySI Payload), operating in the visible and near infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The spatial resolution of Mx camera is 37 metre with a swath of 151 km while that of HySI is about 506 metre with a swath of about 130 km. The data from this mission will...
