Today, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully launched its PSLV-C36 with the remote sensing satellite RESOURCESAT-2A in tow from the First Launch Pad (FLP), at Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. It has been placed into orbit and the solar panels have been deployed, as seen using the five cameras mounted on the rocket for the first time.
The PSLV-C36, which completed its thirty-eighth launch, was launched with six additional motors strapped to the XL version of the rocket booster. This time around the rocket only carried the RESOURCESAT-2A satellite, which weighs a hefty 1235 kg, to the 817 km polar Sun Synchronous Orbit (SSO) and no other satellites were on board for this mission.
Commenting on the launch, A.S. Kiran Kumar, Chairman at ISRO, said,
Today we had a successful launch of Resourcesat-2A to provide three tier imaging data. The satellites solar panels were deployed. The launch was perfect.
This ResourceSat-2A mission follows pursuit to the previous ResourceSat-2 launch event in 2011. The primary objective of the satellite remains the same as its two predecessors – to provide remote sensing data services (observation of the Earth) to global users for the next five years. The three payloads abord the satellite are also similar to ones on the earlier two ResourceSat missions.
Talking about the payloads in detail, the first one is a high-resolution Linear Imaging Self Scanner (LISS-4) camera with 5.8 m spatial resolution and 26-degree steerability. The second is a medium resolution LISS-3 camera with 23.5 m spatial resolution whereas the third is a coarse resolution Advanced Wide Field Sensor (AWiFS) camera with 56 m spatial resolution. They all operate in the Visible and Near-Infrared Region (VNIR).
In addition, this mission also included in-house test payloads developed by the researchers at ISRO. These new technologies included microelectromechanical sensors for performance evaluation, new avionics packages, and an inertial navigation system to better the accuracy of future launch missions.
