Posted on 04/26/2012 10:06:15 AM PDT by MBT ARJUN
Sriharikota: A great week for India's rocket scientists, twin back-to-back successful launches, India's most potent missile the Agni-V from Wheeler Island on April 19 and now the 'grand success' of ISRO'S rocket from Sriharikota.
India today successfully launched its first indigenous 'spy satellite' RISAT-1. The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) carrying the radar imaging satellite lifted off from Sriharikota spaceport in Andhra Pradesh at 5.47 am. Minutes later, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman Dr K Radhakrishnan declared the mission "a grand success".
"PSLV-C19 has successfully injected India's first indigenous radar imaging satellite RISAT-1 into orbit. It is a proud moment for India," he said. (Watch) The 44.5 metres tall, 321-tonne PSLV-C19 ascended towards the sky amidst resounding cheers of ISRO scientists. Around 17 minutes after the lift-off, it placed RISAT-1 into a polar circular orbit at an altitude of 480 kilometres and an orbital inclination of 97.552 degrees. Each of the four stages of the rocket performed as programmed. This is the 20th consecutively successive successful flight of the PSLV. (Read: Top 10 must-know facts)
RISAT-1 has day and night viewing capacity and will not be blinded by cloud cover. It will orbit the earth 14 times a day. It will help in crop monitoring and flood forecasting during Kharif season. It gives India the ability of continuous surveillance. The all-weather surveillance tool is hence sometimes referred as a spy satellite in common parlance.
Weighing 1,858 kilograms, RISAT-1 is the heaviest satellite ever launched from India. It took ISRO 10 years to make this sophisticated satellite. The total cost of the mission is about Rs. 500 crores. It is probably India's most expensive mission hoisted from Sriharikota till date.
RISAT-1 carries a C-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) payload, operating in a multi-polarisation and multi-resolution mode and can provide images with coarse, fine and high spatial resolutions. It has a nominal mission life of five years. It can have a resolution of about 1 meter.
RISAT-1's project director N Valarmathi is the first woman to head a remote-sensing satellite project.
Apart from RISAT-1, India already has another spy satellite RISAT-2 which was launched in 2009. It was acquired from Israel for ABOUT $110 million.
RISAT-1's launch comes exactly a week after India successfully test-fired its first Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) Agni-V.
Polar Orbits are for targeting MRVS.
This just ruined a few Pakis and Chinesesisiz day.
If they can put a heavy load into orbit then they can field an ICBM.
Where is “tech support” located? Hope they have better luck than I do....
Where is “tech support” located? Hope they have better luck than I do....
What a waste. Here is one of the dirtiest, filthiest, poor, hygiene challenged countries on the planet and they are wasting their time with this?
Get to know the flush toiled, soap and water, water purification, insect and rodent control then start playing in space.
India is not all peasants and bullock carts.
You should note that their rockets do blast off and
deploy as designed unlike those of Little Kim.
Whatever their faults I am glad India is advancing thus because I now view them as a firewall in Asia against other, more hostile powers.
Of course it is not all peasants and bullock carts, but 99% of it is. What a filthy cesspool. I hope to never visit there again.
I for one only hope their “advancing” keeps them in India and not bringing their “culture” to the USA. YUCK!
One would think people who figured out rocketry would know you don’t $hit where you eat and just maybe everything that moves in not Holy.
That country is a cesspool and I hope I never have to see it again.
So what made you visit India in the first place?
I traveled world wide for over 26 years on business. I was in many very nice countries (USA still #1 but on a downward path) and some cesspools like India. No way should a country be able to master rocketry and have the hygiene of pigs in a pig pen unless there is a serious problem with the culture.
And where in India did you go? And what “business” would you possibly have in a “cesspool” like India?
I was Corporate Director of Engineering for a 50B+/year business with responsibilities for over 70 plants world wide. Good enough?
I dunno. You didnt tell me where in India you went to.
Corporate Director of Engineering for a 50B+/year business with responsibilities for over 70 plants world wide...... and you sound like Lord Snoot frothing with vitriol who had no idea India was a poor third world country.
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