oeean monitoring satelliteCHENNAI - The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is gearing up for the launch of its second ocean monitoring satellite in August, along with six European nano satellites as piggy back luggage. “The 952 kg OCEANSAT-2 is envisaged as in-orbit replacement to OCEANSAT-1 and will be injected by the stripped down or core alone version of ISRO’s workhorse rocket Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C14) in the same polar sun-synchronous orbit of 720 km,” S. Satish, ISRO’s director (Publications and Public Relations), told IANS from Bangalore over phone.

According to him, the intended orbit, combined with the wide swath of the satellite’s footprint, will enable observation of the same area of the ocean every two days.

OCEANSAT-2 will be used for identification of potential fishing zones, sea state forecasting, coastal zone studies, weather forecasting and climate studies.

Apart from the ISRO-developed Ocean Colour Monitor (OCM) and a Ku-band pencil beam Scatterometer, the satellite will also have a Radio Occultation sounder for Atmospheric Studies (ROSA), developed by the Italian Space Agency.

The Scatterometer with a ground resolution of 50km x 50km is expected to provide accurate information on wind speed and direction.

The eight-band OCM with 360 metres spatial resolution and a swath of 1,420 km will provide information about the same area every two days.

According to Satish, the rocket will blast off from the first launch pad at ISRO’s rocket launch centre at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh near here.

The designed life span of OCEANSAT-2 will be five years but the actual usage may go beyond that as happened with OCEANSAT-1, which was launched in 1999 but is still working.

ISRO will not decommission OCEANSAT-1. The satellite will go into oblivion once its components start dying.

Piggy backing on OCEANSAT-2 will be six nano satellites from Europe, together weighing 25 kg.

This will be the second time that ISRO will launch a cluster of nano satellites. In 2008 ISRO - launching its cartography satellite (CARTOSAT-2A) and Indian Mini Satellite (IMS-1) - also sent up eight nano satellites and set a world record of maximum number of satellites sent up in a single launch.

After this ISRO plans to send into orbit a heavier communication satellite GSAT-4 in September or October through another rocket, the Geo Synchronous Launch Vehicle (GSLV).

GSAT-4 will carry a multi-beam Ka-band bent pipe and regenerative transponder and navigation payload in C, L1 and L5 bands. The satellite can guide civil and military aircraft.

GSAT-4 will also carry a scientific payload, TAUVEX, comprising three ultra violet band telescopes developed by Tel Aviv University and Israel space agency (ELOP) for surveying a large part of the sky in the 1400-3200 A wavelengths.

(Venkatachari Jagannathan can be contacted at v.jagannathan@ians.in)