All set for GISAT-1, India’s ‘eye in the sky’

After multiple delays, India’s ‘eye in the sky’ GISAT-1 Earth Observation Satellite (EOS) is all set to be launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Sriharikota at 5.43 am on Thursday. Blasting off with the satellite will be the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV)-F10.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) began the countdown for the launch on Wednesday morning. The state-of-the-art agile EOS-3 satellite will be placed in a Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) before reaching the final geostationary orbit using its onboard propulsion system.

Dubbed as a ‘game-changer,’ GISAT-1 will help India monitor in real-time the bulk of the subcontinent’s landmass, the oceans, its borders and more. Besides boosting the country’s preparedness for natural disasters, the high-resolution cameras aboard will help track the borders for security reasons.

Placed in the elliptic geocentric GTO orbit at an apogee of about 42,164km above sea level, the satellite will gather critical visual data to aid insights in agriculture, mineralogy, glaciers, forestry, oceanography and more.

Quality of the images captured will, however, depend on cloud-free conditions. Recently, Union minister Jitendra Singh had told the Rajya Sabha that GISAT-1 was capable of imaging the whole country four to five times daily.

The GISAT-1 launch has been plagued by multiple delays due to technical glitches and the Covid-19 pandemic. Originally scheduled for a March 2020 launch, the satellite was to be rocketed to space on March 28 this year. The launch was put off to April and again to May before the pandemic complicated matters.

For Isro, this is the second launch of the year after February, when 18 small satellites were rocketed to space. The agency informed that a four-metre diameter ‘Ogive’-shaped payload fairing is being flown for the first time in the GSLV flight. This is the 14th launch flight for GSLV.