India’s Hi-Tech Eye In The Sky: ISRO to launch HysIS satellite with 30 foreign satellites on Nov 29

Sriharikota, Nov27: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will launch its Hyperspectral Imaging Satellite (HySIS) along with 30 other foreign commercial satellites on Thursday from the Sriharikota launch centre using the PSLV C43 rocket. This is a great feat for ISRO as only a few space agencies in the world have this technology.

The space agency said the 45th flight of PSLV will be launched from the First Launch Pad (FLP) of Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR, Sriharikota.

What is Hyperspectral Imaging?

Hyperspectral imaging or hyspex imaging (imaging spectroscopy) combines the power of digital imaging and spectroscopyIt collects and processes information from across the electromagnetic spectrum.

Hyspex' imaging enables distinct identification of objects, materials or processes on Earth by reading the spectrum for each pixel of a scene from space.

"HysIS is an earth observation satellite developed by ISRO. It is the primary satellite of the PSLV-C43 mission. The satellite will be placed in 636 km polar sun synchronous orbit (SSO) with an inclination of 97.957 deg. The mission life of the satellite is 5 years," ISRO said.

According to the space agency, the primary goal of HysIS is to study the earth's surface in visible, near infrared and shortwave infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Hyperspectral Satellite Features

This earth observing imaging spectrometer will operate in the 0.4 to 0.95µm spectral range, will have 55 spectral bands with 10 nanometre spectral sampling and 30 metre spatial sampling. Push-broom scanning mode is the operating mode of this sensor from a 630 km orbit.

The HySIS satellite has critical chip called an 'optical imaging detector array' which has been indigenously developed by ISRO

The chip-set of the satellite for imaging has been designed by the payloads development centre, Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad.

It was manufactured in Chandigarh at ISRO's electronics arm, the Semi-Conductor Laboratory. It can read upto 1000 x 66 pixels

Co-passengers of HysIS

The co-passengers of HysIS include one Micro and 29 Nano satellites from eight different countries, the agency said, adding, all these satellites will be placed in a 504 km orbit by PSLV-C43.

The countries comprise United States of America (23 satellites), Australia, Canada, Columbia, Finland, Malaysia, Netherlands and Spain (one satellite each).

These satellites have been commercially contracted for launch through Antrix Corporation Limited, the commercial arm of ISRO, the space agency said.

PSLV is ISRO's third generation launch vehicle. It can carry upto 1,750 kg of payload into polar SSO of 600 km altitude.

Additionally, PSLV has been used to launch planetary missions and also satellites into Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit, ISRO said.

India has already experimented with imaging spectroscopy when it launched the Chandrayaan-1, which had a hyperspectral camera on board to help map out the mineral resources available on the moon.