CHENNAI : Within a fortnight from launching India’s heaviest rocket, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is set to put in orbit the first full-fledged hyperspectral imaging earth observation satellite (HysIS), which enables distinct identification of objects from space. ISRO officials on Tuesday said PSLV-C43 would lift off, carrying HysIS at 9.58 am on Thursday and the 15-hour countdown will commence at 5.58 pm on Wednesday.
ISRO chairman K Sivan told Express that though hyperspectral imaging was first tried by the space agency in an 83-kg IMS-1 experimental satellite way back in May 2008 and later on Chandrayaan-1 for mapping lunar mineral resources, this would be the first full-fledged hyperspectral imaging satellite. “HysIS has wide range of applications in agriculture, forestry, geological environments, coastal zones and inland waters etc. It provides a global coverage on repetitive basis to users and supplementing the data from the existing multi-spectral sensors,” he said.
The satellite is built around ISRO’s Mini Satellite-2 (IMS-2) bus and the mass of the spacecraft is about 380 kg. The satellite will be placed in 636-km polar sun synchronous orbit with a mission life of five years. The primary goal of HysIS is to study the earth’s surface in visible, near infrared and shortwave infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Sivan said HysIS would be an important space asset for India because of its unique capabilities of differentiating the objects. ‘Hyspex’ imaging is said to enable distinct identification of objects, materials or processes on Earth by reading the spectrum for each pixel of a scene from space.
Meanwhile, HysIS will be accompanied by 30 foreign satellites, including one micro and 29 nano satellites from eight different countries. The total weight of 30 co-passenger satellites is 261.5 kg. All these satellites will be placed in a 504-km orbit by PSLV-C43. These satellites have been commercially contracted for launch through Antrix Corporation Limited, the commercial arm of ISRO. Of them, 23 satellites are from the United States.