ISRO to launch Cartosat series by month end

  ISRO is all set to make India proud again when, after the historic lift-off of India's heaviest rocket GSLV-Mk III+, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will launch a Cartosat-series satellite, also called the 'eye in the sky' because of its surveillance capabilities, into the 505-km polar sun-synchronous orbit in the last week of June. The PSLV-C38 rocket will launch the satellite which is fourth of the Cartosat series. The Cartosat-series satellite has advanced remote sensing capabilities that enable it to provide scene-specific spot imagery. The state-of-the-art panchromatic (PAN) camera that takes black and white pictures of the earth in the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The 550 kg satellite, which can be steered up to 45 degrees along as well as across the track, traverses the entire globe in 1867 orbits on a 126-day cycle. The Cartosat-2C series satellite gives a boost to India's military surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities by providing high-resolution images of 0.65 metres, an improvement over the 0.8m resolution of the earlier missions. Cartosat-2C satellite was a major help to the military in 2016 when the army relied on satellite images to hit terror launch pads across LoC during the surgical strike. The satellite's panchromatic camera covers 50% of the payload area and is made at Ahmedabad-based Space Applications Centre. It is regarded as the best remote sensing satellite as it can not only click pictures of areas of interest but also record videos of sensitive targets from space, compress it and relay it back to earth.The satellite can produce black and white images of up to 100 cm in resolution as compared to 80 cm rendered by Ikonos, operated by America's DigitalGlobe.