As a sign mark in Indian Space Research Program the OCEANSAT-2 reached in its orbit on last Wednesday. It is the successor of OCEANSAT-1 which was launched ten years ago. The launching was from Sathish Dhavan Space Centre, Sreeharikkotta in Andhra Pradesh. The 960Kg satellite had placed in an orbit 720KM above earth’s surface. The expected lifespan of OCEANSAT-2 is five years.
The OCEANSAT-2 was launched by PSLV, India’s prestigious home built satellite launching vehicle. This was the 15th successful launching of PSLV. Besides OCEANSAT-2 six other nano satellites also have a piggy ride to space in PSLV. The satellites were
1) Cubesat 1 ( Wurzburg University , Germany)
2) Cubesat 2 or Beesat ( Technical University , Berlin, Germany)
3) Cubesat 3 or ITU-pSAT 1 ( Istanbul Technical University, Turkey)
4) Cubesat 4 or Swiss Cube ( Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne, Switzerland)
5) Rubin 9.1 and
6) Rubin 9.2
The Cubesats have almost 1Kg weight and are educational needs of the European Universities. The Rubinsats have 8Kg each.
As the name indicates OCEANSAT-2’s main missions are climate study (prediction of cyclone and rainfall),coastal area study and to find out the potential fishery zones in Indian seas. The satellite can give the information about wind path as well as the direction, strength and height of waves. Hence secure fishery is possible in future days.
OCEANSAT-2 is India’s 16th Remote Sensing Satellite. It carries mainly three instruments to study the ocean surface. The main instrument is OCEAN COLOUR MONITOR (OCM).It is with 360 meters spatial resolution and a swath of 1420 KM. Another instrument namely Ku-Band Pencil beam Scaterometer (SCAT) can cover an area of about 1400KM.The third instrument that OCEANSAT-2 carries is Radio Occultation Sounder for Atmosphere (ROSA) of Italian Space Agency (ASI).
OCEANSAT-2 is monitored from ISTRAC (ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network) in Peeniya near Bangalore, Karnataka. Besides this the helps from ground stations in Lucknow (Uttarpradesh,India), Mauritius, Biac (Indonesia), Swalbard (Norway), Tromso (Norway) and Troll (Antarctica) are also utilized.
OCEANSAT-2 is expected is to be followed by SARAL and MEGHA Tropiques , a joint venture by India and France.
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