First Indian Student and Spy Sat launched

Yesterday saw the first launch after the successful October 22 launch of Chandrayaan 1. PSLV C-12 carried the RISAT-2 with ANUSAT [PDF]for piggyback. Both satellites were launched from Sriharikota on the PSLV that took off at 6:45 am in the morning, local time on April 20, 2009 and were successfully placed in orbit by the PSLV on its fourteenth trip.

While the RISAT-2's end application is being questioned with ISRO slightly wary of the spysat tag, media houses across India celebrated the launch of India's first spy satellite, RISAT-2. RISAT-2 was acquired from the Israeli company with same specifications as its TecSAR satellite, which India's Antrix Corporation (ISRO's commercial arm) launched last year. RISAT-2 is believed to have been put on fast-track development following the Mumbai terror attacks and is believed to be helpful in keeping an eye on its borders. India had to earlier depend on US and Canadian satellites for such data. India is now one of the few countries (Japan, Canada, Germany, Israel and the US) to have such a capability. 

The second satellite, ANUSAT, which piggybacked with the RISAT-2 is a story that is worth putting in the spotlight. It is India's first student-developed satellite. ANUSAT was developed by students and staff of India's pretigious Anna University. This satellite has been in development since 2003. The satellite worth Rs. 4 crores and weighing in at 40 kgs is hoped to be among the first of several student satellites that Indian universities are developing.

For SEDS, this is a great day. In February, during the SEDS India National Conference 2009, we hosted many of the teams that are building such microsatellites during the National Small Satellite Symposium (NS3). We hope that besides our own VITSAT-1, we get to see many of these teams launch their sats into space!

We congragulate the ANUSAT team for their success and for all their hard work in putting India's first student satellite in orbit. We also thank ISRO for encouraging such student-level development of satellites.