ISRO’s Launch of ESO-1 after Pandemic Break.

On 07th of November, 2020 Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) made its first space mission after COVID 19 Pandemic. India’s PSLV-C49 carrying its latest earth observation (LEO) satellite EOS-1 and 9 other customer satellites lifted off from India’s spaceport here on Saturday. It is PSLV’s 2nd flight of PSLV in ‘DL’ configuration. Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C49/EOS-01) lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota at 3:12 pm at the end of a 26-hour countdown procedure.

The lift-off was scheduled for 3:02 pm IST but was delayed by 10 minutes due to Space debris on the path of the vehicle. This delay was for the safety of the vehicle. ISRO has put up a live feed of the launch on Twitter, Youtube and on DD National. The space organisation also tweeted that all nine customer satellites separated successfully and has been injected into their planned orbit.

So what is EOS-01, EOS-01 is otherwise known as Radar Imaging Satellite (RISAT) that will work together with RISAT-2B and RISAT-2BR1 launched last year. EOS-01 initially was named RISAT-2BR2 and was supposed to be the last of the three-satellite constellation with a motive to provide all-weather round-the-clock high-resolution imaging service.

With EOS-01, ISRO adopted a new naming system for its satellites which till now have been named technicalities. Like the Cartosat series of satellites were used for getting data like land topography and mapping, while the Oceansat satellites were used for observations oversea. INSAT-series, Resourcesat series, GISAT, Scatsat, and earth observation satellites, named differently as for their jobs they are assigned to do.

Land and forest mapping and monitoring, mapping of resources like water or minerals or fishes, weather and climate observations, geospatial contour mapping, soil assessment are all done through earth-observation satellites.

The PSLV-C49/ESO-1 also carried nine other customer satellites, 1 from Lithuania, 4 from USA and 4 were launched under commercial arrangement with New Space India Limited (NSIL).

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