ISRO’s RISAT-2, ANUSAT satellite launched

ISRO has launched two new satellites into space, the RISAT-2, its first Radar Imaging satellite, and the ANUSAT, from Sriharikota, on April 20, 2009.RISAT-2 is different from the earlier satellites launched by India, as it uses the Israeli made Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) featuring many antennas to produce high resolution pictures.

RISAT-2 can take images of the earth during day and night as well as in cloudy conditions. India’s existing satellites gets blinded during the night or monsoon season.

ISRO chairman G. Madhavan Nair said, “Its frequency has been so fine-tuned that we can go as low as the soil and even a few meters below the soil.”

He said that RISAT-2 will enhance ISRO’s capability to map the earth during floods, cyclones, landslides, and in natural disasters management.

He also said that earlier, India had to rely on pictures taken from a Canadian satellite, even during the Kosi floods in 2008. He added that RISAT-2 help in in mapping rice crop coverage.

RISAT-2, weighing 300 kilogram, and orbiting at an altitude of 550kms, is expected to have a life span of 3 years.

The SAR developed by Israel Aerospace Industries, also gives RISAT-2 defence capabilities. The radar has the capacity to observe the ground targets zoomed to one meter in size.

The ANUSAT weighs 40 kilogram, and is a experimental communication micro-satellite, built by Anna University, under ISRO’s tutelage. It the first Indian satellite to be designed and built by university students.

ISRO chairman G. Madhavan Nair, has unequivocally dispelled that notion that the RISAT-2 is a spy satellite.

“This is essentially meant for peaceful applications like disaster management support and things like that. It is the security agencies who will procure the images and
do whatever they want,” G. Madhavan Nair said, in an interview with NDTV.

Nair also said that ISRO has put its Advance Mission Computer and Telemetry System, on-board the PSL-C12  flight, that replaces a 30-year-old computer system.

ISRO’s Advance Mission Computer and Telemetry System, was used to guide the PSLV from lift-off till the injection of the two satellites.

Not many countries have satellites with this level of sophistication.