Cartosat

The Cartosat series of satellites are a type of earth observation satellites indigenously built by India. Up till now 6 Cartosat satellites have been launched by ISRO. The Cartosat series is a part of the Indian Remote Sensing Programme. They were specifically launched for Earth’s resource management and monitoring.

The first Cartosat satellite was Cartosat-1 which was launched by PSLV-C6, on May 5th2005 from the then newly built Second Launch Pad at Sriharikota.Department of Space (DOS), Government of India had earlier launched a series of satellites for Earth’s resource management and monitoring. These satellites had been very successful in providing data in various scales ranging from 1:1 Million to 1:12,500 scale. Each of the Indian Remote Sensing satellite missions ensured data continuity while introducing improvements in the spatial, spectral and radiometric resolutions. Considering increase demand for large scale and topographic mapping data DOS launched the Cartosat-1 in 2005.

Cartosat-1 was launched by PSLV-C6 on 5 May 2005 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre's SLP at Sriharikota. Images from the satellite is available from GeoEye for worldwide distribution. The satellite covers the entire globe in 1867 orbits on a 126-day cycle. It carries two state-of-the-art panchromatic (PAN) cameras that take black and white stereoscopic pictures of the earth in the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The two cameras with 2.5 m spatial resolution, acquire two images simultaneously, one forward looking (FORE)at +26 degrees and one aft of the satellite at -5 degrees for near instantaneous stereo data. The time difference between the acquisitions of the same scene by the two cameras is about 52 seconds.

...
Wikipedia