Isro's Indian Rocket Lifts Off Cartosat, 30 Passenger Satellites Succesfully From Sriharikota:- The National Space Agency, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)'s Indian Rocket "Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C38)" has successfully launched India's Earth Observation Satellite "Cartosat" along with 30 co-passenger satellites from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh.

After ISRO launched 104 satellites on board PSLV C-37 on Febraury 15 this year, the launch marks the second highest number of payloads in a single flight. Of the 30 satellites that have been launched, 29 are foreign and one is Indian.

At around 9:29 am, the PSLV rocket standing 44.4 metre tall and weighing 320 tons tore into the morning skies with a growl breaking free of the earth's gravitational pull. The weight of the 31 satellites was around 955kg. The rocket's main cargo is India's Cartosat-2 series weighing around 712 kg for earth observation. This satellite is similar to the earlier Cartosat-2 series satellites.

The co-passenger satellites include 29 nano satellites weighing 243 kg and are from 14 countries - Austria, Belgium, Britain, Chile, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, and the US - as well as one Indian nano satellite, NIUSAT. The images sent by the Cartosat satellite would be useful for cartographic, urban, rural, coastal land use, utility management like road network monitoring, water distribution, creation of land use maps, change detection to bring out geographical and man-made features and various other land information systems and geographical information system applications.

The Indian Nano Satellite weighing about 15 kg "NIUSAT" belonging to Nooral Islam University, Tamil Nadu, is one among the 30 co-passenger satellites. The multi-spectral imagery for agricultural crop monitoring and disaster management support applications would be provided by the NIUSAT satellite.

SUPRAJA