ISRO launches all-weather earth imaging satellite from Sriharikota

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Saturday launched the earth observation satellite EOS-01 along with nine international customer satellites on board its Polar rocket PSLV-C49 from the spaceport of Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. This was the 51st mission of ISRO's workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle.

According to ISRO, EOS-01 is an earth observation satellite intended for applications in agriculture, forestry and disaster management support. The agency said that EOS-01 is another Radar Imaging Satellite (RISAT). It will work together with RISAT-2B and RISAT-2BR1 launched last year.

EOS-01 was initially named RISAT-2BR2, and was supposed to be the third of the three-spacecraft constellation aimed at providing all-weather round-the-clock service for high-resolution images.

Land and forest mapping and monitoring, mapping of resources like water or minerals or fishes, weather and climate observations, soil assessment, geospatial contour mapping are all done through such satellites.

The customer satellites were launched under commercial agreement with NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), Department of Space, it said. The customer satellites include one from Lithuania for technology demonstration, and four each from Luxembourg and USA for maritime applications and multi-mission remote sensing, respectively.

This was the first launch by the Indian Space Research Organisation since the COVID-19 induced lockdown came into force in March. Earlier in December 2019, ISRO had launched RISAT-2BR1, another earth observation satellite similar to EOS-01.