ISRO PLANS LAUNCH OF TWO PSLV-BASED MISSIONS

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has decided to open its account for the year 2022 with the launch of two space missions in February and March. The two missions if launched successfully, will set the ball rolling for the next set of missions including the first developmental flight of the Gaganyaan capsule in its unmanned avatar, and the much-awaited SSLV (Small Satellite Launch Vehicle)-D1 mission in April and May respectively.

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The first spacecraft- RISAT 1A will be launched onboard the PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) rocket tentatively in the first week of February. RISAT is expected to fill the void left by the decommissioning of the RISAT satellite in 2017. The same mission will also carry INSPIRESat-1, a small multinational CubeSat into low-earth orbit. The second mission, which will be launched in March, will lob India’s Oceansat-3 to low-earth orbit.

RISAT-1A

RISAT-1A (Radar Imaging Satellite1A) is the sixth satellite of RISAT-series of ISRO using an active C-band SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) imager. The objective of the RISAT-1A mission is to use the all-weather as well as the day-and-night SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) observation capabilities in applications such as agriculture, forestry, soil moisture, geology, sea ice, coastal monitoring, object identification, and flood monitoring. It will also be used for military surveillance.