'Safety checks over, PSLV-C7 ready for launch'

Tirupati, Jan 8: Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C7), carrying four payloads, will blastoff from the First Launch Pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) at Sriharikota on January 10, ISRO Chairman G Madhavan Nair said today.

Addressing a press conference here, Dr Nair said all stringent safety checks, including Mission Readiness Tests, had been carried out at every stage to ensure a perfect launch.

The PSLV-C7 will carry into space India's Cartosat-2, a 680 kg Remote Sensing Satellite and the 550 kg Space Capsule Recovery Experiment (SRE), besides Indonesia's 56 kg Lapan-Tubsat satellite and the six kg Pehuensat of Argentina, the ISRO Chief added.

Citing the modifications incorporated in PSLV-C7 compared to the previous flight of PSLV-6, Dr Nair said this was the first time that ISRO would be using SRE, which would splash in the Bay of Bengal, about 140 km east of Sriharikota coast after a stay in orbit for 13 to 30 days.

A floatation system will keep the SRE afloat and enable recovery, he added.

He said, ''the state-of-the art Remote Sensing Satellite (IRS) Cartosat-2 is the 12th in IRS series and is an advanced one capable of providing scene-specific spot imagery. It will join the other six IRS Satellites-- IRS-IC, IRS-ID, Oceansat-I, Technology Experimental Satellite (TES), Resourcesat-1 and Cartosat-1.''

Cartosat would be helpful in urban and rural infrastructure development and management, Land Information System (LIS) and Geographical Information System (GIS), Dr Nair said. High resolution imagery from Cartosat-2 would be useful in urban infrastructure, transportation system planning, monitoring and implementation, mapping individual settlements and such other developmental activities that required detailed terrain evaluation.

Dr Nair said an estimated Rs 60-70 crore revenue had been obtaining through photo images and expressed an increase of 30 per cent.

The satellite's health would be continuously monitored from the Spacecraft Control Centre, Bangalore with the help of ISTRAC-network of stations at Bangalore, Lucknow, Mauritius, Bearslake in Russia, Biak in Indonesia and Svalbard in Sweden.

Dr Nair said, ''the Lapan-Tubsat, a commercial satellite, is a cooperative venture between Technical University of Berlin and the Indonesian Space Agency (ISA), Lapan. It is an earth observation satellite besides a technical demonstrator in control systems.'' It carries two Charge Coupled Device (CCD) cameras with ground resolutions of 5 m and 200 m respectively.

The second commercial satellite-- Pehuensat-1, developed by Argentina School of Engineering, Argentina Association for Space and Technology and Amsat Argentina, is intended to gain experience for designing more complex missions in the fields of education, technology and science.

UNI