Monday, May 2 2005 09:47 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Sriharikotta (AP): India's eleventh remote sensing satellite, "CARTOSAT-1", which is expected to give further impetus to cadastral level applications with its high resolution imageries, is set for launch on May 5 from Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) Satish Dhawan Space Centre.

The 1560-kg CARTOSAT-1 along with a piggy back satellite "HAMSAT" would be launched by the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C6) from the newly set up state-of-the-art second launching pad at the centre at 10:19 hrs (IST) and the countdown will begin at 05:49 hrs (IST) on May 3. "The CARTOSAT-1 is the heaviest remote sensing satellite, which is mainly intended for cartographic applications. It will carry two state-of-the-art panchromatic cameras that will take black and white stereoscopic pictures of the earth in the visible region of electromagnetic spectrum," Project Director, CARTOSAT-1, D V A Raghava Murthy told reporters in Sriharikotta.

"This the first satellite to carry two cameras to take 3-D images and the images to be taken by CARTOSAT-1 will have a spatial resolution of 2.5 metre and the cameras will cover a swath of 30 km and they are mounted on such way that near simultaneous imaging of the same from different two angles is possible," he added.

The cameras are steerable across the direction of the satellite's movement to facilitate the imaging of an area more frequently.

The images taken are compressed, encrypted, formatted and transmitted to the ground stations and the images will be reconstructed from the data received at the ground stations.

CARTOSAT-1 also carries a Solid State Recorder with a capacity of 120 GB to store the images.

The data from CARTOSAT-1 is expected to provide enhanced inputs for large scale mapping applications and stimulate newer applications in the urban and rural development, land and water resources management, environment impact assessment and various other geographical information system applications.

"The data can be used for updating topographic maps, besides generation of large scale topographic maps," said Murthy adding, mapping of India can be done in one or one and half years.

The mission life of CARTOSAT-1 is five years and the project cost is estimated at about Rs.250 crore. CARTOSAT-1 will be followed by CARTOSAT-2, which will have a spatial resolution of about one metre.

The "HAMSAT will meet the long felt need of the Amateur Radio Operators in the South Asian region who possess the required equipment and operate in the UHF/VHF band based satellite radio communication and it is ISRO's first theme-based micro-satellite," project director, HAMSAT, J P Gupta said.

This satellite is expected to play a valuable role to provide low cost readily accessible reliable means of communication during emergencies and calamities.

The satellite will carry two transponders and one of the transponders has been developed indigenously and the other has been provided by Dutch Amateur Radio operator and graduate engineering student at Higher Technical Institute, Venlo, The Netherlands.

"HAMSAT is India's contribution to the international community of Amateur Radio Operators," said Gupta adding this effort was also meant to bring ISRO's satellite services within the reach of the common man and popularise space technology among the masses.

"This is the first time we will be doing the launch of two Indian satellite in one mission. One for cartography and another for Amateur radio operators (HAMs), Project Director, PSLV-C6, N Narayanamoorthy said.

"The PSLV-C6 is same as PSLV-C5 except some changes in remote filling and drain system for second stage propellant servicing," he said adding that the total duration of the mission was 1120 seconds.