POLAR SATELLITE LAUNCHING VEHICLE (PSLV)

Satellite launching has become a routine process for India nowadays.

The PSLV at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh of India has been perfected for launching indigenous satellites of various weights as well as those from other countries.

Indian Space Science has grown up as in many advanced countries.

Vikram Sarabhai and Satish Dhawan are the two great men who put the seed of space science in Indian soil and built the Indian Space Research Organization popularly abbreviate by ISRO.

On 24 September 2009, a year ago, the PSLV placed the satellite – Oceansat-2 as well as six European nano-satellites.

It was a remarkable success for the ISRO.

PSLV has launched a total of 39 spacecrafts.

In order to watch ocean, Oceansat-1 satellite was launched 10 years ago.

The data collected helped to study ocean pollution and sedimentation, in addition to find large shoals of fish in ocean.

The color monitor in Oceansat-2 will allow such work to continue.

In addition, Oceansat-2’s scatterometer, which sends out a radio signal in a narrow beam and detects the echo that comes back, can measure the speed and direction of surface winds over the ocean.

The information can help accurate weather forecasts.

Already the Ocean Color Monitor (OCM) has taken pictures of the Arabian Sea off the coast of Gujarat’s Kutch Region.

It appears that it has beamed good quality pictures of Arabian Sea.

However, the life span of Oceansat-2 is only 5 years.

Very short living satellite indeed!