Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched PSLV-XL rocket carrying advanced earth observation satellite Cartosat-3. With the world’s highest resolution imaging capability, Cartosat-3 has a resolution of 25 cm.
The main purpose of the mission is to place the 1,625-kg Cartosat-3 satellite, the third generation of Earth-observation remote sensing satellites that ISRO has been launching and using 1988. These satellites provide high-resolution imagery of the Earth that are used for applications like 3-D mapping, disaster management, agriculture and water management, recording of changes in land use, and urban and rural infrastructure planning, and even border surveillance.
The PSLV-C47 rocket is also carrying 13 commercial nano-satellites from the US. Twelve of them are Flock-4P satellites, also Earth-observation satellites, from the private company Planet, which has sent several such satellites on PSLV rockets earlier. In fact, it was an earlier version of these same Flock satellites that, in February 2017, had helped ISRO launch a world record 104 satellites at one go. Of the 104 satellites on board PSLV-C37, 88 were Flocks. Those Flocks were called doves, and the current bunch is known as super-doves.
ISRO also launched 13 US nano satellites, crossing the 300 foreign satellite launch mark.
