New ISRO centre to control launch of RiSat-1 spy satellite

The Indian rocket (PSLV) that will carry the 1,850 kg indigenous surveillance satellite, Radar Imaging Satellite (Risat-1), to the skies this month will be controlled by the new mission control centre at Sriharikota, said a senior official of Indian space agency ISRO.

"The second mission control centre was inaugurated by President Pratibha Patil this January. The forthcoming rocket launch would be controlled and monitored from the new mission control centre.

The rocket will fly off the first launch pad," S. Satish, director of publications and public relations at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), said.

RISAT-1 Mission
RISAT 1, Radar Imaging Satellite 1, is the first satellite imaging mission of ISRO using an active C-band SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) imager.

The objective of the RISAT mission is to use the all-weather as well as the day-and-night SAR observation capability in applications such as agriculture, forestry, soil moisture, geology, sea ice, coastal monitoring, object identification, and flood monitoring.

RISAT 1 is developed, manufactured and integrated by ISRO. The 3-axis stabilized spacecraft bus consists of a hexagonal prism shape build around a central cylinder as in the illustration above.

Most of the spacecraft subsystems and the payload are integrated in the prism structure and the central cylinder.

The solar panels and some subsystems are mounted on the cube-shaped section of the spacecraft.