In its thirty eighth flight (PSLV-C36), ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle successfully launched the 1235 kg RESOURCESAT-2A Satellite from Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR, Sriharikota. This is the thirty seventh consecutively successful mission of PSLV.
More Highlights
- The data sent by RESOURCESAT-2A will be useful for agricultural applications like crop area and crop production estimation, drought monitoring, soil mapping, cropping system analysis and farm advisories generation.
- 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. The AWiFS provides images with a sampling of 56 metres, a swath of 740 km and a revisit of 5 days whereas the LISS-3 provides 23.5 metre sampled images with 141 km swath and a repitivity of 24 days. LISS-4 provides 5.8 metre sampled images with 70 km swath and a revisit of 5 days.
- With this launch, the PSLV has yet again demonstrated its reliability.
- The total number of satellites launched by India’s workhorse launch vehicle PSLV including today’s RESOURCESAT-2A has now reached 122, of which 43 are Indian and the remaining 79 are from abroad.
Background:
PSLV-C36 / RESOURCESAT-2A
PSLV-C36
PSLV-C36 is the thirty eighth flight of ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) placed the 1235 kg RESOURCESAT-2A into an 817 km polar Sun Synchronous Orbit (SSO). PSLV-C36 was launched from the First Launch Pad (FLP) at Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR, Sriharikota. In this flight, the ‘XL’ version of PSLV with six solid strap-on motors was used.
PSLV is the ISRO’s versatile launch vehicle for launching multiple satellites in polar SSOs, Low Earth Orbits (LEO) as well as Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) and sub GTO. With 36 successful launches, PSLV has emerged as the workhorse launch vehicle of ISRO and is offered for launching satellites for international customers. During 1994-2016 period, PSLV has launched a total of 121 satellites, of which 79 satellites are from abroad and 42 are Indian satellites.
Reference:ISRO
