With Eyes On Pakistan, India Speeds Up Launch Of Special Spy Satellite
New Delhi:
In the wake of the terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam -- that killed 26 people -- the Indian space agency is accelerating the launch of a special spy satellite that can help protect and keep a sharp eye on India's borders in all weather conditions.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is ready to launch a special radar imaging satellite in the next few weeks. This satellite has the capability for imaging both during day and night, and it can also see through clouds.
The satellite is very hard to hide from this bird in the sky, and is often called a `spy satellite'.
Union Minister for Science and Technology Dr Jitendra Singh said the ISRO will launch the PSLV-C61 mission carrying the state-of-the-art EOS-09 satellite.
"Equipped with a C-band synthetic aperture radar, EOS-09 will be capable of capturing high-resolution images of Earth's surface under all weather conditions, day or night," he said.
This radar imaging satellite has been made by Indian scientists and will be an addition to the existing constellation of over 50 satellites India already has in space.
India's sophisticated Cartosat-3 satellite, which is already in service, can beam down images with a resolution of less than half a meter from its low Earth orbit. But this satellite gets blinded at night, and the enemy can move its assets. But the high-end EOS-9 can always find what the enemy is trying to hide, as it never gets blinded.
The ISRO chairman, Dr V Narayanan, told NDTV that the program to launch the workhorse rocket -- the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) -- with the radar imaging satellite is going on in a campaign mode with the target to launch it as soon as possible.
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