Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday hailed the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for the successful polar satellite launch carrying 31 satellites, saying the space agency has made the country proud.
ISRO's workhorse rocket PSLV-38 blasted off from the spaceport in Sriharikota this morning, carrying the Cartosat-2 series satellite – a dedicated satellite for the defence forces – along with 30 co-passenger satellites.
"Congratulations to ISRO on its 40th successful Polar satellite launch carrying 31 satellites from 15 countries. You make us proud!," Modi said in a tweet.
Cartosat-2 is a remote sensing satellite and it is similar in configuration to earlier satellites in the series with the objective of providing high-resolution scene specific spot imagery.
The imagery sent by the satellite would be useful for cartographic applications, urban and rural, coastal land use and regulation, utility management like road network monitoring, water distribution, creation of land use maps, change detection to bring out geographical and man-made features and various other land information system (LIS) as well as geographical information systems (GIS).