Oceansat-2 To Be Launched On September 23  Oceansat-2 |
Oceansat-2, ISRO’s latest satellite is scheduled for launch this Spetember 23. It will aid in the identification of prospective fishing spots and in coastal zone studies.
The satellite will be launched from by ISRO’s own launch platfrom, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle or PSLV from the Sriharikota launchpad. The launch of the satellite will also have an European flavour with the successive launch of six European nano satellites from the same PSLV.
It will replace the Oceansat-1 launched on May 1999 that was used for the study of physical and biological aspects of oceanography.
“Data from Oceansat-1 (which has completed ten years of service) was widely used by fishermen,” ISRO Chairman Madhavan Nair said.
The European satellites that are being launched in tandem with the Oceansat-2 satellite are two Ruben satellites from Germany and four cubesats namely Beesat built by Technical University, Berlin, UWE-2 built by University of Wuerzburg, Germany, ITU-pSat from the Istanbul Technical University, Turkey, and SwissCube-1 built by the Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne, Switzerland.
Oceansat-2 would carry a payload of an Ocean Colour Monitor and a Ku-band pencil beam Scatterometer, along with a Radio Occultation Sounder for Atmospheric Studies, the last device was developed by the Italian Space Agency.
“The on-board Scatterometer is a very good instrument for getting surface wind on the sea. It is requires for sea state forecasting. And for maritime navigation, the wave height disturbance is also important,” Nair said.
It will orbit in the same orbit of Oceansat-1 that is 720km above earth.
