India's Eyes in the Sky

"The point to remember is that a giant leap into space can be a giant leap towards peace below." ~ Willy Ley

I have blogged fairly extensively on India's space programme. Space is something that has fascinated me since I was a kid. I remember watching programmes on the Discovery Channel and NGC alone in my bedroom with just the glow from the TV in front of my eyes and the presenter's voice falling on my ears, and mesmersing images of far away worlds taken by NASA's Great Observatories. Science never seemed more exciting and I took pride in the fact that I could understand everything that was said, and my sister could not.

Coming to the topic of the post, the Indian Space Research Organisation plans to launch Cartosat-2A, India's first official military satellite by the end of the year. The original launch scheduled in August has been postponed to September or October. It is high time India had her eyes in the sky. The US and the Russian Federation has scores of spy satellites up in space. If the launch is a success, India will join a select club(it seems to do that everytime ISRO sends one up in space) of nations that have the capability to spy on the globe. Earlier India had to buy satellite images from the CIA or Russian military intelligence to keep a tab on our nutty neighbours. But now that we have our own spy satellite ready to take high resolution images of the military and strategic installation in the neighbouring countries, it will be a shot in the arm for our defence forces, who will be able to plan defence and attack strategies better in the light of the new information that will be made available by the satellite. Still being in the polar orbit, it will not be able to keep a watch 24x7, so India plans to launch two more satellites by the end of next year, so that we can keep a tab on the entire globe.


The spatial resolution of Cartosat-2A has been augmented and is a lot more than Cartosat 1 which was mainly for cartographic purposes. The first satellite launched by India for experimental military reconnaissance was the Technology Experiment Satellite-1 in October 2001. It sent back images of troop movements of US forces in Afghanistan. The need has been especially felt since such a reconnaissance satellite will help to prevent another Kargil.

The programme has been hush-hush so far and the exact details of the kind of images and resolution that the satellite is capable of are not known, ISRO sources reveal that the satellite can take pictures even through a thick cloud cover, like during the monsoons.

Cartosat-2A will be accompanied by an Israeli military satellite, POLARIS. It will take ISRO's commercial launch capabilities further. Let's raise a toast to the scientists and engineers who worked hard to make an Indian military satellite a reality.

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