Cartosat-2 launch posponed

Bangalore, India, 26 October 2006 – The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has postponed the launch of Cartosat-2, the advanced remote sensing satellite, to January due to problems faced during the testing phase. "There has been a delay in testing," an ISRO official said in Bangalore. "We have solved most of the problem".

The interest in Cartosat-2, which will be the nation's second `mapping' satellite since May 2005, is in its high resolution of one metre. This will make it the world's second best alongside Ikonos of the US that also gives 1-m imageries; and a close rival to Quickbird that offers an incredibly close 60-cm resolution; all of them from a distance of 800-900 km in space.

ISRO had earlier reached the 1-metre capability in October 2001 when it launched the Technology Experiment Satellite (TES). But that data is fully acquired and used by the defence forces and TES is also ending its term.

Data from Cartosat-2 will be available for civil commercial applications, especially where details of small areas are needed. An agile camera allows itself to be pointed at specific areas.

Apart from the resolution, Cartosat-2 will also bring a noticeable cost difference to domestic civic planners, a senior ISRO official told. Currently a lot of customers in India are buying data from Ikonos and also from Quickbird, but these charge around $18-25 per imagery of a 1-sq km area. Cartosat-2, which will join the seven Indian Remote Sensing Satellites now in orbit - should be at least 5-8 times lower than these prices, the official said.

Currently, nearly 300 Indian users — among them municipal planners, infrastructure providers but largely defence agencies — are said to be buying 1-metre data from foreign satellites at costs ranging from Rs. 30,000 (USD 659) to a few million of rupees annually. Cartosat-2 could double this number by adding new national users who could not afford data from foreign satellites imageries; and also wean away existing users towards it.

"Cartosat-2 would be saving quite a lot of foreign exchange. When Cartosat-2 becomes operational, ISRO (through export arm Antrix) would be the only agency offering all imagery solutions from a single IRS family - from 1-metre imageries to 2.5m, 5m, 20m 56 m, Oceansat's 360m and even 1 km through a few INSATS (some that are equipped with cameras)," the official said.

The Cartosat-2 follows the launch of CARTOSAT-1, which was launched on May 5, 2005 from Sriharikota. CARTOSAT-1 is the eleventh satellite in the Indian remote sensing satellite series. Intended for cartographic applications, it carries two panchromatic cameras that take black-and-white stereoscopic pictures in the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The imageries have a spatial resolution of 2.5 metre and cover a swath of 30 km.

The imageries are proving to be highly useful for generating digital elevation maps for urban and rural development, land and water resources management, disaster assessment, relief planning and management and environmental impact assessment. CARTOSAT-1 also carries a Solid State Recorder with a capacity of 120 Giga Bits to store the images taken by its cameras.

Source : http://www.hindustantimes.com