On March 17, 1988, 31 years after the world’s first remote sensing satellite was launched by the erstwhile Soviet Union, India sent her first remote sensing satellite — IRS-1A — into space for earth observations, something that the scientific community from across the globe consider essential.
And 25 years later, India has the largest civilian constellation of such satellites in space providing imageries in a variety of spatial resolutions, spectral bands and swaths.
A lot of credit for this goes to Bangalore-headquartered Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro).
The importance of such satellite is immense for the nation as it helps integrate the understanding and interpretation of data on natural phenomena and measurements of electromagnetic energy emitted or reflected from the earth’s atmosphere or even its surface.
Such data is used for several applications in India, covering agriculture, water resources, urban development, mineral prospecting, environment, forestry, drought and flood forecasting, ocean resources and disaster management.
The integration of remotely sensed data with conventional systems for resource management and environmental assessment has proved to be successful and has further resulted in institutionalisation of such technologies in user-domain.
The measurements are made for a large number of locations on the earth’s surface by sensors onboard satellites and technology has moved from low-resolution images. Today, the onboard sensors measure different sections of the visible, infrared and microwave regions of the electromagnetic spectrum of the earth and send high-resolution images back to the observation centres here.
Ask Isro, and its top scientists maintain that the success of the Indian Remote Sensing Programme “is due to the contributions of the many professionals in diversified fields of space technology development and its effective utilisation by end-users for developmental activities.”
The user ministries, academia and industry, Isro believes, have made vital contributions in all the above activities.
“Various professional societies in India have also contributed substantially in the outreach programmes by periodical publications and conduct of seminars,” an official said.
Current remote sensing satellites in space
-RISAT-1: Launched on April 26, 2012 by PSLV- C19
- Megha-Tropiques: Launched on Oct 12, 2011 by PSLV-C18
- RESOURCESAT-2: Launched on April 20, 2011 by PSLV-C16
-CARTOSAT-2B:Launched on July 12, 2010 by PSLV-C15.
-OCEANSAT-2: Launched on Sept 23, 2009 by PSLV-C14
-RISAT-2: Launched on April 20, 2009 by PSLV-C12
- CARTOSAT-2A: Launched on April 28, 2008 by PSLV-C9
- CARTOSAT - 2: Launched on January 10, 2007 by PSLV-C7
-CARTOSAT-1: Launched on May 05, 2005 by PSLV-C6
-RESOURCESAT-1 : Launched on Oct 17, 2003 by PSLV-C5