As it counts down to Wednesday morning's launch of its latest remote-sensing satellite Resourcesat-2, the national space establishment will also be looking for a morale booster.

The PSLV mission, numbered C16, was delayed by a few months. Set for a 10.12 a.m. ride from the Sriharikota launchpad, the satellite is a routine replacement of an earlier one. It will be placed 800 km from the earth.

The launch could not have come at a more apt time than now. The old reliable workhorse vehicle was last used in a July 2010 launch. ISRO's next two launches of the indigenous higher-powered GSLV failed.

The organisation is still smarting from the ignominy of its (technically Antrix Corporation's) now aborted S-band contract with private company Devas Multimedia.

ISRO's spokesman, Mr S. Satish, said Resourcesat-2 (‘R2') would continue the remote-sensing data services that Resourcesat-1 (‘R1') provided since 2003.

Some 20 ground stations across the world receive data from nine Indian remote sensing (IRS) satellites, including Resourcesat-1 and sale of these Earth imageries forms 20-30 per cent of revenues of the Rs 900-crore Antrix (as at 2009-10).

Government agencies, including the US Department of Agriculture, buy IRS data of their own crops, he told Business Line , adding, “We developed the applications of the data within the country.”

R1, for example, has been a successful tool in a programme funded by the Union Agriculture Ministry and executed by the Department of Space through the State remote-sensing applications centres called FASAL (Forecasting Agricultural output using Space, Agrometeorology and Land-based observations).

Farm scientists used FASAL to forecast 30-45 days ahead the output of kharif rice, rabi rice, wheat, jute, potato, mustard, across the country and at the district level, wheat, cotton, mustard, sorghum and sugarcane for 2009-10. “This was to enable authorities to take any crop import decision in time,” Mr Satish said.

2 CO-PASSENGERS

Two small (‘micro' or 100-kg class) satellites will also be put in orbit along with Resourcesat-2. X-Sat is a Singaporean remote-sensing spacecraft built by the Nanyang Technological University. This would be the 26th foreign satellite to be launched by ISRO and would, in a small way, add to the coffers of the business arm Antrix Corporation. Youthsat is an Indo-Russian satellite to study the stars and the atmosphere.

The 1,206-kg Resourcesat-2 cost Rs 140 crore and the launcher Rs 90 crore. It has been improved over the first version. The miniaturised electronics items make it lighter than R1, with less requirement of power or size “just as in the case of the early mobile phones and today's sleek things,” he said. Its swathe or sweep is 70 km compared with R1's 23 km.

It also carries an experimental payload to track speed and position of ships. Called Automatic Information System, it is developed by Canada's COMDEV.

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