Facts about ISRO’s Cartosat-2 satellite | Fusion - WeRIndia

India’s system of defense is receiving a boost once again, with the launch of the sixth Cartosat-2 series satellite. The satellite has excellent surveillance abilities, being able to spot a terrorist camp so well that it can even define the bunkers in them. With that said, these are ten facts to know about it:

• This satellite, the sixth in the Cartosat-2 series, weighs a total of 712 kilograms. There were also thirty nano co-passenger satellites that launched with it, which weigh a total of 243 kilograms put together.
• Of those thirty nano satellites that were launched alongside the main one, only one of them is Indian. The other twenty-nine are foreign.
• These twenty-nine foreign satellites are part of a commercial agreement between the commercial team of the ISRO, the Antrix Corporation Ltd, and customers from fourteen other countries (Austria, Belgium, Britain, Chile, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, and the USA).
• The singular Indian nano satellite, the NIUSAT, weighs a total of 15 kilograms and belongs to the Nooral Islam University in Tamil Nadu. It will monitor both agricultural crops and support applications for disaster management.
• The NIUSAT was launched by the ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle in the vehicle’s fortieth flight.
• This satellite has a 0.6-meter resolution, able to spot “very small objects”. An ISRO official says that with this, defense will get a “leg-up”, with this resolution able to identify terrorist camps and bunkers.
• To compare the resolution of this with previous resolutions, the previous satellite in this series had a resolution of 0.8 meters, and the images it took helped India take out seven terrorist camps on the Line of Control last year.
• The same ISRO official called the satellites in this series “agile”. This term refers to the programming of the satellites to take very specific pictures of designated places.
• However, this satellite will also have high resolution for its pictures. It was specifically said by the ISRO as being “high-resolution scene specific spot imagery”.

• This launch on Friday will represent the ninetieth launch of a spacecraft mission by the ISRO.

Image credit: Image by NASA-Imagery from Pixabay  (Free for commercial use)

Image Reference: https://pixabay.com/it/photos/stazione-spaziale-internazionale-iss-988/