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PSLV blast-off successful, Cartosat-2B in orbit
N Ravikumar
Tribune News Service

Sriharikota, July 12
The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle PSLV-C15 carrying remote sensing Cartosat-2B along with four satellites successfully blasted off from the spaceport here today.

The 44.4 metre long PSLV-C-15 lifted off at 9.22 am, at the end of a 51-hour countdown, placing the 694 kg Cartosat-2B and four auxiliary payloads in a 630 km polar Sun Synchronous Orbit (SSO), as the elated scientists at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre here celebrated and congratulated each other.

Cartosat-2B is the latest in the Indian remote sensing satellite series and mainly intended to augment remote sensing data services to the users of multiple spot scene imagery with 0.8 metre spatial resolution and 9.6 km swath in the panchromatic band. Cartosat-2 and 2A, two Indian remote sensing satellites in orbit are currently providing such services.

Built to last for five years, the Rs 200 crore Cartosat-2B carries a panchromatic camera (PAN) similar to that of its two predecessors and is capable of imaging a geographical strip of land of 9.6 km with a resolution of 0.8 metre.

It also carries a solid state recorder with a capacity of 64 Giga Bits to store the images taken by its camera which can be read out later to the ground stations.