The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has launched the new Resourcesat-2A remote sensing satellite from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh.

Launched aboard ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), Resourcesat-2A has already been placed into its polar sun synchronous orbit at an altitude of 824km.

"The 1,235kg satellite is planned to be brought to its final operational configuration over the next few days."

After separating from the fourth stage of PSLV, Resourcesat-2A’s two solar arrays deployed automatically.

The 1,235kg satellite is planned to be brought to its final operational configuration over the next few days.

Completed in 17min 5s, the latest flight was the 37th mission of PSLV.

Equipped with three cameras, Resourcesat-2A will provide data for several agricultural applications such as crop area and crop production estimation, drought monitoring, soil mapping, cropping system analysis and farm advisories generation.

Resourcesat-2A also features a 3-Tier imaging system with advanced wide field sensor (AWiFS), linear imaging self scanner-3 (LISS-3), and linear imaging self scanner-4 (LISS-4) cameras.

ISRO noted that AWiFS provides images with a sampling of 56m, a swath of 740km and a revisit of five days.

LISS-3 provides 23.5m sampled images with 141km swath and a repitivity of 24 days, while LISS-4 provides 5.8m sampled images with 70km swath and a revisit of five days.

In September, ISRO launched a 371kg Scatsat-1 satellite using a PSLV rocket.

Conducted from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, the launch was accompanied by seven co-passenger satellites.