Indian Space Program: News & Discussion - Sept 2016

JayS · Post by **JayS** » 14 Nov 2018 17:39

This GSAT has a Advanced Camera onboard. Wonder what would be the use of it. Anyone knows..?

Vips · Post by **Vips** » 14 Nov 2018 17:41

Tasks for 6 Satellite missions and 4 Launch Missions to be completed by January per chairman in his address.
Mission team in place for GaganYaan. First Unmanned mission to be achieved by Dec 2020 he further added.

JayS · Post by **JayS** » 14 Nov 2018 17:49

Vips wrote:Tasks for 6 Satellite missions and 4 Launch Missions to be completed by January per chairman in his address.
Mission team in place for GaganYaan. First Unmanned mission to be achieved by Dec 2020 he further added.

Correction - Dec 2021.

Two more ComSat launches coming in Dec, before Chandrayaan-2 next year. ISRO mentioned contribution by industry multiple times. 70-80% of this GSLV MK3 HW is supplied by the Industry, it was mentioned.

SSridhar · Post by **SSridhar** » 14 Nov 2018 17:57

We have completely mastered the entire cryogenic system, says Dr. Narayanan, LPSC

JTull · Post by **JTull** » 14 Nov 2018 18:00

JayS wrote:This GSAT has a Advanced Camera onboard. Wonder what would be the use of it. Anyone knows..?

https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/11/14/g ... 2-gsat-29/

Sivan told Indian media the satellite will also carry tech demo payloads to investigate laser communications links between two satellites in space. Laser, or optical, data links provide a significantly faster way to relay information than conventional radio communications.

SSridhar · Post by **SSridhar** » 14 Nov 2018 18:02

IISU director says that RLG was used for the first time today and it has given excellent result.

SSridhar · Post by **SSridhar** » 14 Nov 2018 18:04

Dr. Sivan says that the excellent orbit achieved would extend life of satellite by 2 years.

prasannasimha · Post by **prasannasimha** » 14 Nov 2018 18:13

Succesful textbook launch

Vips · Post by **Vips** » 14 Nov 2018 18:14

Four new payloads tested: Optical communication, 2 different bands for communications and RLG based Inertial Navigation system.
Next mission of GSLV MK III will see the satellite payload increased by another 400 KGS.

So special to see the joy on the faces of the security guards and the policemen at the mission control center.

JayS · Post by **JayS** » 14 Nov 2018 18:21

JTull wrote:
JayS wrote:This GSAT has a Advanced Camera onboard. Wonder what would be the use of it. Anyone knows..?
https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/11/14/g ... 2-gsat-29/

Sivan told Indian media the satellite will also carry tech demo payloads to investigate laser communications links between two satellites in space. Laser, or optical, data links provide a significantly faster way to relay information than conventional radio communications.

I was talking about high resolution imagery Camera from GEO. This is different that Optical Communication.

SSridhar wrote:Dr. Sivan says that the excellent orbit achieved would extend life of satellite by 2 years.

Fantastic. Planned mission life is 10yrs. So now it could be upto 12yrs then..?

A mission brochure here, with good factual data.

https://www.isro.gov.in/gslv-mk-iii-d2- ... n-brochure

pankajs · Post by **pankajs** » 14 Nov 2018 18:54

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/isros-g ... ns-1946857
ISRO's 'Geo-Eye' To Monitor India, Offer Web Access To Remote Locations

This experimental satellite carries on-board 'a unique high-resolution camera - a so called 'GEO-EYE' to specifically aid the strategic community by tracking enemy ships in the Indian Ocean.

Air Marshall (retd) KK Nohwar, former Vice-Chief of the Indian Air Force and the current Director General Center for Air Power Studies, New Delhi, says "This is very welcome and necessary development by ISRO."

Mr Nowhar added, "This 'Geo-Eye' will be of significant strategic if not tactical importance."

One from my wish list IF my guess is correct. My wish was itself based on something like below I had read a while back.

https://www.popsci.com/gaofen-4-worlds- ... into-space
Gaofen 4, The World's Most Powerful GEO Spy Satellite, Continues China's Great Leap Forward Into Space

The Gaofen 4 is the world's most powerful GEO spy satellite. It has a color image resolution of slightly less than 50 meters (which is enough to track aircraft carriers by their wake at sea) and a thermal imaging resolution of 400m (good for spotting forest fires). It may also have a lower resolution video streaming capacity. Because of its round-the-clock coverage of Chinese territory and near aboard, Gaofen 4 can provide instant coverage of earthquake or typhoon hit areas to support humanitarian relief. It will also allow China to monitor strategic foreign sites such as WMD facilities and naval bases inside its observation box.

Karthik S · Post by **Karthik S** » 14 Nov 2018 19:00

Ninjamonkey@Aryanwarlord
Follow Follow @Aryanwarlord
More
#BREAKING : #GeoEye is possibly the first purely optical #spysat launched by #India . This will help #surgicalstrikes type ops immensely.

Can any guru tell how? We did use our satellites during PoK SS, how this one will be added advantage.

pankajs · Post by **pankajs** » 14 Nov 2018 19:02

Unless India has achieved some unheard of advancement in optical imagery field the above is unlikely. Surgical strike kind of deal will need a much finer resolution than what seems possible from GEO @ a resolution of ~50m based on the Chinese spec.

Possible? Yes. India could have leapfrogged ahead of China.
Probable? Very unlikely. I will not bet money on it. My bet would be that at best we have perhaps matched them on this particular instance.

Added Later: Figure out best Cartosat resolution satellite and then mentally raise its orbit to GEO. Calculate what resolution pics will it capture from its new perch. That will be the limit to our present capability unless we have achieved some spectacular breakthrough.

prasannasimha · Post by **prasannasimha** » 14 Nov 2018 19:28

Lets just say do not underestimate Indian satellite resources and capabilities. We have used them heavily in the past and will do so in the future too

SSridhar · Post by **SSridhar** » 14 Nov 2018 20:32

And that eye will be constant.

JayS · Post by **JayS** » 14 Nov 2018 20:58

Our watchful eyes from LEO have pretty respectable capability. Our capabilities are among the best in the world. There was time in fact around late 1990s when ISRO has the best resolution imagery capability in the world for few years. Some American company improved on that and we again caught up with the cutting edge with better cartosats later and the cat and mouse game continued. Capability is one thing, another is number of satellites for temporal and Spatial coverage. I think now we have pretty decent coverage of entire neighborhood of interest almost round the clock. We have 0.3mtr resolution or better now from LEO. I don't know the latest and greatest capability number. But achieving the same from GEO would be quite challenging. We may need a dedicated telescope perhaps for that in GEO.

Reportedly live video feed was used for Surgical Strike. But LEO has its limits as the available time to focus on one area is small. I think with 3 or 4 satellites in same Polar orbit its possible for us to has continuous coverage of a particular point in subcontinent. GEO scores there as we have a fixed Camera. But then resolution is an issue as now you are seeing from 15-20x larger distance which would mean pretty heavy optical setup for same resolution. So there are pros and cons.

yensoy · Post by **yensoy** » 14 Nov 2018 21:02

1. There was some reference to a hyperspectral camera. Hyperspectral imagery can give fantastic amounts of information, even if the so-called "resolution" is not that great. There is clearly some progress on this front. And of course none of us is buying the 50m resolution story.
2. "Digital India" for J&K & North-East, and I'm sure you aren't going to be fooled into thinking it's about letting Ladhakis & Arunachalis watch Byju. This is a clear attempt at aiding communications to far-flung outposts in these sensitive border areas, and possibly have sensors focussed on them as well.
At least, that's my hope.

lakshmanM · Post by **lakshmanM** » 14 Nov 2018 21:26

ISRO's GISAT is more powerful than Chiense GF-4 and it has HySIS as well.

This GSAT has a Advanced Camera onboard. Wonder what would be the use of it. Anyone knows..?

A major advantage of GISAT over LEO-based CARTOSAT satellites is that it has a very high temporal resolution. Satellites orbiting in LEO are faster than earth's rotation. As a result, they stay over area-of-interest only for a very short time and revisit (successive observation by same satellite) may take days. In the case of GISAT, the time delay between successive observation of two different targets is only limited to the time taken to steer the satellite and data rate.
http://mark20x.blogspot.com/2018/09/isr ... gisat.html

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 14 Nov 2018 21:28

prasannasimha wrote:Lets just say do not underestimate Indian satellite resources and capabilities. We have used them heavily in the past and will do so in the future too

We could use this spec till we get to chaiwala messages.

https://www.satimagingcorp.com/satellit ... /geoeye-1/

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 14 Nov 2018 21:47

^^
Time taken to steer.. perhaps only for the first lock (for single target) and then subsequent tracking is based on target speed. That is negligible.

Target switch time is what mentioned above.

kit · Post by **kit** » 14 Nov 2018 21:52

How different is this from the American Space Based Infra-Red Sensor satellites. ??

SBajwa · Post by **SBajwa** » 14 Nov 2018 21:53

Indranil wrote:
rsingh wrote:Why on earth would somebody choose pink colour for such important installation?
What's wrong with pink? I find the paint scheme very tasteful!

I grew up in "quarters" which were always painted (white-washed) pink. It was only when I moved to the west, and Bollywood started making insenstive one-tracked potrayal of gay people, that I realized that pink is not "manly".

Exactly! Pink Turbans and pink shirts are common in India it is only in western cultures that Pink is associated with women.

pankajs · Post by **pankajs** » 14 Nov 2018 21:56

lakshmanM wrote:ISRO's GISAT is more powerful than Chiense GF-4 and it has HySIS as well.
<snip pic>
This GSAT has a Advanced Camera onboard. Wonder what would be the use of it. Anyone knows..?

A major advantage of GISAT over LEO-based CARTOSAT satellites is that it has a very high temporal resolution. Satellites orbiting in LEO are faster than earth's rotation. As a result, they stay over area-of-interest only for a very short time and revisit (successive observation by same satellite) may take days. In the case of GISAT, the time delay between successive observation of two different targets is only limited to the time taken to steer the satellite and data rate.
http://mark20x.blogspot.com/2018/09/isr ... gisat.html

From the URL provided above

Imaging sensors on GISAT :

Multi-spectral VNIR: 50-meter ground resolution
Multi-spectral LWIR: 1500 meter ground resolution
Hyperspectral VNIR: <500 meter " "
Hyperspectral SWIR: <500 meter " "

If we assume this to be correct, we will get GEO resolution similar to the Chinese ~50m as speculated earlier.

Rishi_Tri · Post by **Rishi_Tri** » 14 Nov 2018 22:09

https://www.isro.gov.in/sites/default/f ... 0D2%20.pdf

Details on Launch Vehicle, Satellite, flight path including times, and Very Good Graphics.

lakshmanM · Post by **lakshmanM** » 14 Nov 2018 22:13

How different is this from the American Space Based Infra-Red Sensor satellites. ??

Ameican SBIRS geo satellites are designed to detect and track heat signature in real time. GISAT, on the other hand, is more of a point and shoot. It might have limited video recording capability.

If we assume this to be correct, we will get GEO resolution similar to the Chinese ~50m as speculated earlier.

Same resolution but better discrimination. Unlike GF-4, GISAT has hyperspectral imaging i.e. it will be able to squeeze out more info from each pixel.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 14 Nov 2018 22:21

kit wrote:How different is this from the American Space Based Infra-Red Sensor satellites. ??

which one?

disha · Post by **disha** » 14 Nov 2018 22:23

pankajs wrote:Possible? Yes. India could have leapfrogged ahead of China.
Probable? Very unlikely. I will not bet money on it. My bet would be that at best we have perhaps matched them on this particular instance.

India has one of the best Earth-Observing satellite fleet in the world and has the largest EO fleet.

Take a look at the specs of AstroSat, it spectrum spans X-Rays, UV and Visible and is one of a very sophisticated telescope in operation today.

I do not think Chinese are nowhere as near in EO as purported out to be. In face of it, the launch capacity of Chinese space launch vehicles is immense. But they have it something of a design roadblock (their long march 5 is still not operational) and are falling rapidly behind. On top of it, they are losing focus with trying to do too many things at once.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 14 Nov 2018 22:29

in comparison with few of the khan sats, the cartosat-3 had .25m resolution (vs .4m/geo-eye1).

---

RE: Infrared: I don't think any satellite exists today that can track humans or living things infrared emissions (1 micron levels) -- or will it ever get there. Forget sats, let's talk about ground based mil ranges first.

JayS · Post by **JayS** » 14 Nov 2018 22:52

pankajs wrote:
Added Later: Figure out best Cartosat resolution satellite and then mentally raise its orbit to GEO. Calculate what resolution pics will it capture from its new perch. That will be the limit to our present capability unless we have achieved some spectacular breakthrough.

Wont work that simply. Theoretically its possible to add optics (telephoto lens like) to compensate the distance and maintain the same resolution.

Indranil · Post by **Indranil** » 14 Nov 2018 23:56

Well done ISRO! Now looking forward to launching 4 ton payloads to GTO (by decreasing the overlap between S200 and L110?).

Vips · Post by **Vips** » 15 Nov 2018 03:42

First unmanned mission under Gaganyaan by Dec 2020: ISRO chief K Sivan

The Indian Space Research Organisation has set a 'target' of achieving the country's ambitious manned mission to space by 2021, with the first
unmanned programme of 'Gaganyaan' planned for December 2020, the space agency's chief K Sivan said Wednesday.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced in his Independence Day address that India will attempt to send an astronaut to space by 2022 on board 'Gaganyaan'.

If successful, India would be the fourth nation to achieve the feat.

"The mission team is on track and already the work is going on," Sivan said after the successful launch of communication satellite GSAT 29 onboard GSLV-MkIII-D2 here. "The first unmanned mission of Gaganyaan team we are planning for December 2020, to have the first human in space mission by December 2021. This is the target we are setting (for ourselves)," he said.

Later talking to reporters, the ISRO Chairman said the space agency was planning to have two unmanned missions before the human mission was launched.

"We are planning to have two unmanned missions. Third one will be manned mission. First, we will follow all the parameters and if it does not work, we will fly the second unmanned mission. Once it gets confirmed, we will go for human mission," he said. 'Gaganyaan', proposed by the prime minister on August 15, is a "very fantastic mission, a great gift he has given to all of us as a work," Sivan said.

Asked about the agenda of the manned mission, Sivan said the first mission was to take a human into space. "They will be orbiting for 5-7 days and carrying out scientific experiments and then they will be brought back safely. This process demonstrates India's capability to launch (a) human in space," he said.

The ISRO Chairman had earlier said technologies that would help in sending an Indian astronaut to space - like the human crew module
and the environment control and life support system - have already been developed.

Sivan Wednesday described GSLV-MkIII-D2, the launch vehicle that will be used to carry an Indian astronaut to space, as "excellent, reliable simple.

SSridhar · Post by **SSridhar** » 15 Nov 2018 07:52

The Mission Director also mentioned the first time use of magnetic torquers (I assume so because it was not clear) for attitude control.

chetak · Post by **chetak** » 15 Nov 2018 08:00

SSridhar · Post by **SSridhar** » 15 Nov 2018 11:56

There is no news yet of first orbit raising, planned for this morning as Dr. Sivan said

SSridhar · Post by **SSridhar** » 15 Nov 2018 13:27

GSLV Mk III-D2 / GSAT-29 Mission: The first orbit raising operation of GSAT-29 satellite has been successfully carried out today - ISRO

GSLV Mk III-D2 / GSAT-29 Mission: The first orbit raising operation of GSAT-29 satellite has been successfully carried out today (15th November) by firing the Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) engine of the satellite at 0834 Hrs IST for a duration of 4875 seconds

Orbit Determination results from this LAM firing are:

Apogee X perigee height was changed from 35897 km X 189 km to 35745 km X 7642 km.
Inclination was changed from 21.46 deg to 8.9 deg.
Orbital period is 13 hours.

SSridhar · Post by **SSridhar** » 15 Nov 2018 13:32

So, the injected GTO was 35897 km X 189 km, inclination 21.46 deg against expected 35975 X 150 Kms 21.5 deg

disha · Post by **disha** » 15 Nov 2018 13:39

^It is the inclination that is important. Very precise inclination.

Shows how effective is the RLG on thus massive rocket!

I think ince operationalized, this bahubali will be able to do >4.5 tons to GTO

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 15 Nov 2018 14:09

Fantastic achievement by the ISRO.Kudos to the whole team and institution.Something that our other DPSUs must emulate.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 15 Nov 2018 15:36

Gslv mk3 has matched the ariane4 figure to gto and by attaching 4 boosters to first stage will it improve?

Sats are getting bigger for tv and internet but 7t to leo and 4t to gto should cover a lot of the addressable market

Some of the heavy sats are mil payloads and not launched outside of home country

Is there a mk4 being planned to match the arian5 gto?

JTull · Post by **JTull** » 15 Nov 2018 16:01

There's no mk4. Jut that the core-liquid stage will be replaced by Semi-cryo. But with 4.5 tonnes to GTO already achievable, I wonder what we will use it for.