NEW DELHI, Mar 31 (NNN-PTI) – The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), is likely to launch seven satellites this year, Junior Minister at Indian Prime Minister’s Office, Jitendra Singh, said yesterday.
“Seven satellites are likely to be launched by ISRO during the current year,” Singh said, in a reply to the lower house of Indian parliament (locally called Lok Sabha).
Singh said, ISRO has successfully launched the earth observation satellite EOS-4, onboard PSLV-C52 on Feb 14, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre along with INS-2TD and INSPIRESat-1 as co-passengers.
“The satellites were injected into the polar sun synchronous orbit at 524.84 km altitude,” he stated. “EOS-4 is a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imaging satellite for earth observation, operating in C-band at 5.4 GHz frequency, for applications in the domains of agriculture, disaster management, water resources and forestry.”
According to officials, INS-2TD is the first satellite of the 2nd generation nanosatellites intended to demonstrate indigenously developed Nano systems for in-orbit performance, while as INSPIRESat-1 is a student satellite of the class 9U, jointly developed by the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST), the India and Laboratory of Space Physics, and the U.S. University of Colorado to study the Ionosphere dynamics and sun’s coronal heating processes.
“Currently, the satellites are undergoing various in-orbit tests and calibrations and subsequently, the data available from the satellites will be used for achieving the mission objectives, during the designated mission life,” the minister stated.
