India Launches World’s First Stereographic Mapping Satellite into Orbit

India will inaugurate a new launch pad at its Satish Dhawan space port near Chennai, on the south-east coast, by putting the world’s first stereographic mapping satellite into orbit.

If Cartosat-1 reaches its destination 620km above the earth, Indian rockets will have achieved 12 consecutive successful launches over 12 years. The most innovative feature of the 1.6-tonne Cartosat-1 is its pair of cameras, which will give stereo images of the earth’s surface that can distinguish features down to 2.5 metres across. They will directly generate three-dimensional maps that have until now been achievable only indirectly, by combining data from a large number of satellite passes over the same place.

“Such a stereographic imaging system does not exist in the civil sector anywhere else,” says Mr Nair, chairman of the Bangalore-based Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). “It will give information about heights that will be very useful in applications such as planning power lines.”

Cartosat-1 will join what is already the world’s largest cluster of non-military remote sensing satellites. Six Indian spacecraft are already observing the earth with a wide range of instruments. [via Financial Times]