(IPS) feature

India took a big jump forward in its remote sensing satellite technology with last week's launch of a one-metre resolution remote sensing satellite, widely believed to be a forerunner to a sophisticated defence satellite.

The one-tonne satellite, launched last Monday morning from the spaceport of Sriharikota, 100km from Chennai in southern India, can provide imageries of Afghanistan too, according to experts.

Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) chairperson Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan declined to comment on its military applications. But he said: "It depends on the user. It can be put to use to a broad range of applications that a one-metre resolution satellite has."

The satellite will keep in view the country's security concerns, he added.

It has a camera with one-metre resolution that can detect buildings, structures and moving vehicles.

A 44m tall, 294 tonne Indian rocket, Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), blasted off last Monday morning from Sriharikota to put into orbit the 1108kg Technology Experimental Satellite (TES) at a height of 560km.

Critical technologies for future

This orbit is lower than the usual 817km orbit that Indian remote sensing satellites in the past, with a ground resolution of 5.6m, put in. This could help in taking clearer pictures, analysts said.

PSLV also carried with it two foreign low-earth satellites - Proba of a Belgian company and Bird of the German space agency DLR . Proba weighed 94kg and Bird 97kg.

An Isro official at its headquarters in Bangalore in southern India said TES was designed to "demonstrate critical technologies" for future PSLV flights. These include new technologies for sensors and solar panels, he added.

Future PSLV missions include two remote sensing satellites, Cartosat-I with 2.5m resolution, and Cartosat-II with 1m resolution.

The country has so far built a series of Indian remote sensing (IRS) satellites, with a ground resolution of 5.6km. Officially, they are for civilian uses that centre on mapping and monitoring of its vast natural resources.

Inadequacies

But the IRS spacecraft's resolution proved inadequate when the satellites could not detect the movement of infiltrators from neighbouring Pakistan in 1999 into the Kargil sector of the north Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, which has been disputed by both countries for more than 50 years.

India eventually cleared the Kargil sector of Pakistani soldiers after a brief but bitter unofficial war that left an estimated 170 Indian and 700 Pakistani soldiers dead.

A report by an official inquiry committee to look into intelligence lapses in Kargil pointed to, among others, the failure of Indian remote sensing satellites to detect the infiltrators.

The "intrusions could have been detected earlier if India had half-metre resolution satellite imagery. The satellite imageries available within the country were of a lower capability," the committee noted. It said the Kargil intrusions highlighted the "gross inadequacies in the nation's surveillance capability, particularly through satellite imagery".

By then, Isro had already announced it was building the two remote sensing satellites Cartosat-1 and Cartosat-2.

India currently has three functioning IRS spacecraft in space, one of which is exclusively for studying oceans.

It is also buying 1m ground resolution images from the US company Space Imaging's Ikonos satellite.

IRS images have made considerable inroads into the global market through the 10 international ground stations that receive IRS images world over. A global partnership between Antrix Corp and Space Imaging has helped IRS images make forays in North and South America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Globally, remote sensing revenues account for US$10 billion, a report of the space department said.

Various applications

The IRS system has become the mainstay of the National Resources Management System (NRMS). Satellite remote sensing, in which space-based sensors provide a wide range of information in different windows of the electromagnetic spectrum, is used the world over to map and monitor resources.

IRS data is used for several applications such as crop acreage yield estimation, drought monitoring and assessment, flood mapping, land use and land cover mapping and wasteland management.

Other uses include ocean and marine resources survey, urban planning, mineral prospecting and forest resource survey. One of the most unique applications of IRS data is the Integrated Mission for Sustainable Development using satellite and collateral socio-economic data.

Though less sophisticated at present, Indian satellite images could also be of use in the huge surveillance operation that is considered crucial to US military operations in Afghanistan, an on-line report in the international science magazine New Scientist has acknowledged.

In April this year, India launched a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) to put 1.5-2 tonnes communications satellites into space. Defence analysts said the launch of GSLV also gave the country capability to make intercontinental ballistic missiles.