India’s 16th remote sensing satellite which is also the 2nd meant to study ocean atmosphere, was launched into its planned orbit on Wednesday.
The event was described by ISRO as “precise and excellent”. Oceansat-2 satellite mainframe systems derive their heritage from previous IRS missions and launched by PSLV-C14 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota on Sept. 23, 2009. It carries mainly three payloads:
- Ocean Colour Monitor (OCM)
- Ku-band Pencil Beam scatterometer (SCAT) developed by ISRO
- Radio Occultation Sounder for Atmosphere (ROSA) developed by the Italian Space Agency.
The mission life is 5 years. Oceansat-2 is one of the few international missions that exclusively study marine atmosphere, coastal climate and wind speed. According to ISRO, Oceansat-1 nearly revolutionised fish zone prediction and the information it gave fishermen through rural societies helped to double fishing catches.
The mission objectives of Oceansat-2 are to gather systematic data for oceanographic, coastal and atmospheric applications. The main objectives of OceanSat-2 are to study surface winds and ocean surface strata, observation of chlorophyll concentrations, monitoring of phytoplankton blooms, study of atmospheric aerosols and suspended sediments in the water.
The payloads:
Ocean Colour Monitor (OCM) – OCM is a 8-band multi-spectral camera operating in the Visible – Near IR spectral range. This camera provides an instantaneous geometric field of view of 360 meter and a swath of 1420 km.
Scanning Scatterometer (SCAT) – SCAT is an active microwave device designed and developed at ISRO/SAC, Ahmedabad. It will be used to determine ocean surface level wind vectors through estimation of radar backscatter. The scatterometer system has a 1-m parabolic dish antenna and a dual feed assembly to generate two pencil beams and is scanned at a rate of 20.5 rpm to cover the entire swath. The inner beam makes an incidence angle of 48.90° and the outer beam makes an incidence angle of 57.60° on the ground. It covers a continuous swath of 1400 km for inner beam and 1840 km for outer beam respectively.
Radio Occultation Sounder for Atmospheric Studies (ROSA) – ROSA is a new GPS occultation receiver provided by ASI (Italian Space Agency). The objective is to characterize the lower atmosphere and the ionosphere, opening the possibilities for the development of several scientific activities exploiting these new radio occultation data sets.
sorry for the interruption sir,but where is the switch to turn this thing on……don't tell me you forgot to put that onboard?
Hey………….its better that u ask the scientists who made this.
I don't think it will be on board as u did u for your first robot.