ISRO successfully launches latest remote sensing satellite

India's latest remote sensing satellite, Resourcesat-2A, was today successfully launched by ISRO's workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle from the launch pad at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh.

Resourcesat-2A, intended for resource monitoring, is a follow on mission to Resourcesat-1 and Resourcesat-2, launched in 2003 and 2011 respectively. It is intended to continue the remote sensing data services to global users provided by Resourcesat-1 and 2.

"PSLV-C36 successfully launches Resourcesat-2A," ISRO said.

Describing it as a "successful" launch, ISRO Chairman A S Kiran Kumar said it is going to provide continuity to "our three tier imaging data, which will be extremely useful for various applications of land and water."

He said "it has been a perfect launch."

"I wish to congratulate the entire ISRO team for the wonderful job they have done and for putting one more operational satellite into orbit," Kumar said.

PSLV-C36, the 38th flight of PSLV, blasted off at 10:25 hours from the first launch pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota and injected Resourcesat-2A into the orbit in a flawless flight lasting about 18 minutes.

The 1,235-kg Resourcesat-2A was placed in an 817-km polar Sun Synchronous Orbit (SSO), ISRO said.

In this flight, the 'XL' version of PSLV with six solid strap-on motors was used.

Resourcesat-2A carries three payloads which are similar to those of Resourcesat-1 and 2.

They include a high resolution Linear Imaging Self Scanner (LISS-4) camera operating in three spectral bands in the Visible and Near Infrared Region (VNIR), medium resolution LISS-3 camera operating in three-spectral bands in VNIR and one in Short Wave Infrared (SWIR) band, and coarse resolution Advanced Wide Field Sensor (AWiFS) camera operating in three spectral bands in VNIR and one band in SWIR, with specified spatial resolutions, ISRO said.

ISRO said that data sent by Resourcesat-2A would be useful for agricultural applications like crop area and crop production estimation, drought monitoring, soil mapping, cropping system analysis and farm advisories generation.
The mission life of Resourcesat-2A is five years.

The satellite was earlier planned for launch on November 28.

ISRO said like its predecessors Resourcesat-1 and 2, Resourcesat-2A has a unique 3-tier imaging system with Advanced Wide Field Sensor (AWiFS), Linear Imaging Self Scanner-3 (LISS-3) and Linear Imaging Self Scanner-4 (LISS-4) cameras.

AWiFS provides images with a sampling of 56 metres, a swath of 740 km and a revisit of five days whereas the LISS-3 provides 23.5 metre sampled images with 141 km swath and a repeativity of 24 days, it said LISS-4 provides 5.8 metre sampled images with 70 km swath and a revisit of five days.

Resourcesat-2A also carries two Solid State Recorders with a capacity of 200 Giga Bits each to store images taken by its cameras, which can be read out later to ground stations.

In this flight, the 'XL' version of PSLV with six solid strap-on motors was used.

The total number of satellites launched by PSLV, including today's Resourcesat-2A has now reached 122, of which 43 are Indian and the remaining 79 are from abroad.