Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology; Minister of State (Independent Charge) Earth Sciences; MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh said that 7 satellites are likely to be launched by ISRO during the current year.
In a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha today, Dr Jitendra Singh said, ISRO has successfully launched the earth observation satellite EOS-4 onboard PSLV-C52 on 14th February, 2022 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, along with INS-2TD & INSPIRESat-1 as co-passengers. The Satellites were injected into the polar sun synchronous orbit at 524.84 km altitude.
He said, EOS-4 is a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imaging satellite for Earth Observation, operating in C-band at 5.4 GHz frequency, for applications in the domains of agriculture, disaster management, water resources and forestry.
INS-2TD is the first satellite of the 2nd generation nanosatellites intended to demonstrate indigenously developed Nano systems for in-orbit performance.
INSPIRESat-1 is a student satellite of the class 9U, jointly developed by Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST), Thiruvananthapuram, India and Laboratory of Space Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, the USA, to study the Ionosphere dynamics and sun’s coronal heating processes.
The Minister said, currently, the satellites are undergoing various in-orbit tests and calibrations and subsequently, the data available from the satellites will be used for achieving the mission objectives, during the designated mission life. The total time taken to realize the satellite is 63 months from date of financial sanction and the expenditure towards realization of satellite is nearly Rs. 490 crore.