The Hindu : More sophisticated satellites to be launched shortly

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jun 12, 2002

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More sophisticated satellites to be launched shortly

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD JUNE 11. A series of sophisticated satellites are proposed to be launched in the coming months to maintain India's pre-eminent position in remote sensing, the Secretary, Department of Space, K. Kasturirangan, said here today.

Giving details of the country's space programme for the near future, he said the Department of Space had no dearth of users within the country and outside for its satellite imagery.

In fact, it was providing satellite pictures to 12 countries, including the U.S. and earning substantial revenue.

Dr. Kasturirangan said it was proposed under the Tenth Plan to launch new satellites under the ResourceSat programme early next year.

These would be more sophisticated than the IRS IC and ID satellites and carry multi-spectrcal 5 metre resolution cameras which would cover an area of 700 to 800 sq. km.

By August this year, a satellite meant exclusively for meteorological applications would be launched for the first time on a PSLV and put into geo-synchronous orbit.

The Department of Space was already getting ready to augment communication and broadcasting capacity under the INSAT programme, besides launching the second generation cartographic satellite with one metre resolution.

Referring to the plea of the Chief Ministers of Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh to provide more accurate groundwater prospect maps, he said the present ones with a scale of 1: 50,000 may be found inadequate.

But they were far better than the maps of the previous generation as could achieve 95 per cent success in striking groundwater.

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