In a textbook launch, India’s indigenously built PSLV-C15 rocket successfully placed 5 satellites into orbit. The 44.4 metre-tall four-stage PSLV-C-15, costing Rs 260 crore, blasted off from a launch pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre with ignition of the core first stage and placed the satellites in orbit one after the other. The PSLV C15 carried five satellites, which also included a remote sensing satellite, the Cartosat 2B and one pico satellite called the STUDSAT made by engineering college students of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. The other satellites were Alsat from Algeria, two nano satellites from Canada and Switzerland.
Cartosat-2B is an advanced remote sensing satellite built by ISRO. This is the latest in the Indian remote sensing satellite series and the 17th in this series. Cartosat-2B is mainly intended to augment remote sensing data services to the users of multiple spot scene imagery with 0.8 metre spatial resolution and 9.6 km swath in the panchromatic. Since its first launch in 1994, the PSLV has so far placed 17 Indian and 22 foreign satellites into orbit – making it one of the most successful launch vehicles ever – worldwide.
