Artist’s rendition of satellites orbiting the Earth – rottenman/123RF Stock Photo
We’re looking at the OceanSat-3 satellite launch in India this week, together with the latest launches from China and a reminder that in Europe it is the week of the ESA Ministerial!
India Satellite Launch
The OceanSat-3 satellite is scheduled to be launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on the 26th November. It will be put into space by the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, alongside eight nano-satellites, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India.
OceanSat-3, also known as Earth Observation Satellite (EOS)-06, is the third of the OceanSat missions which have been built, launched and operated by ISRO. It was originally due to be launched in early 2020; however, the pandemic and other issues have delayed the launch until now. The satellite is expected to be placed into a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of approximately 723 kilometres, and its main instruments are:
- Ocean Colour Monitor with 13 spatial bands and having a spatial resolution of 360 m and a swath of 1400 km.
- OSCAT-3 – A Ku-Band scatterometer with a ground resolution of 50 km × 50 km focusing on wind data.
- Sea Surface Temperature Monitor at 1 km resolution.
Obviously, given its name, this satellite focuses on ocean observation, with data applications including ocean colour, monitoring phytoplankton blooms and suspended sediment, sea surface temperature and ocean winds. It is hoped that the satellite will provide ongoing ocean datasets, as OceanSat-2, which was launched in 2009, ceased providing data from the scatterometer instrument in 2019 and the ocean colour instrument last year; OceanSat-2 is expected to reach end of life in 2023. The original mission OceanSat-1 was launched in 1999 and reached end of life in August 2010.
As noted above, there will be eight other launches alongside OceanSat-3, and they are:
- BhuthanSat (also known as INS 2B) is a Bhutan Earth Observation (EO) nanosatellite developed jointly with ISRO.
- Anand EO satellite, also known as Pixxel TD1, is a prototype satellite developed and built by Pixxel India. It is expected that Pixxel will eventually launch a 20 strong constellation of high-resolution hyperspectral satellites collecting data for agriculture, urban and climate monitoring applications.
- Thybolt 1 and 2 are technology demonstrator satellites for Indian company Dhruva Space.
- Four Astrocast nanosatellites, for the Swiss company’s Internet-of-things (IOT) constellation
China Satellite Launch
Last week China launched five more of its Gaofen 03D satellites from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, with commercial carrier Galactic Energy using its CERES-1 rocket to put the satellites into sun-synchronous orbits. Although not a lot is known of these satellites, they are believed to be EO satellites with high-resolution optical imagers and will link up with the existing Jilin-1 constellation. The data from the satellite is expected to be used for applications such as land surveys, urban planning, transportation, crop yields and disaster support.
Europe
The latest ESA Council at Ministerial level is taking place in Paris, on Tuesday and Wednesday this week (22 and 23 November). This meeting will set the future strategic direction for ESA, level of funding ESA will receive from each member stare, including the UK, which will define their involvement in areas including space science, exploration, navigation, and EO.
It was announced on Wednesday that the 22 member states had committed €16.9bn to ESA for the 2023-2025 period. It was slightly down on their request of €18.5bn, but almost 14% increase on the previous period.
