Nearly three minutes after its lift-off at 9.57 a.m. on Thursday, the Indian Space Research Organisations (ISRO) workhorse, the PSLV, carrying 31 satellites, soared in a trajectory crossing the path of the Sun and sped to inject the country s Hyper Spectral Imaging Satellite (HysIS), dubbed  Sharp Eye , in its intended orbit.

In the course of the next one hour, the team at the Mission Control waited for the PSLV C-43 to come up on the other side of the Equator to insert 30 small commercial satellites from various countries into the orbits requested by the customers.

The HysIS is is an Earth observation satellite primarily to assist in a wide range of applications in agriculture, forestry, geological environments, coastal zones, among others.

The 30 satellites are one each from Australia, Canada, Colombia, Finland, Malaysia, Netherlands and Spain, and 23 from the USA.

After 17 minutes from the lift-off from the first launchpad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR, Sriharikota, the PSLV C-43 injected the HysIS into a precise orbit of 636 km from the Earth.

To a question whether the HysIS could be used for anti-terror operations, ISRO Chairman K. Sivan said the ISRO s job was only to build the satellite, but did not rule out such a possibility.  Our duty is to mainly build the satellite, which can precisely identify an object. The usage…we are not bothering. That depends on the users. Right now it is meant for Earth observation missions. But after seeing the results, maybe….but it’s not in our hands.

Sivan lauds ISRO team

Mr. Sivan lauded the ISRO team for making the HysIS with state-of-the-art technology.

 The heart of the system required for the HysIS satellite is basically an optical imaging detector chip. This chip has been indigenously designed by the Space Application Centre of the ISRO and fabricated at our semi-conductor lab at Chandigarh. I am sure that team ISRO can be proud that they are really giving an excellent space asset to India,  he said.