India launches border-control satellite
India successfully launched its first all-weather Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) built imaging satellite on 20 April, which will enable it to closely monitor its restive and porous borders with its neighbours.
The 300 kg Radar Imaging Satellite-2 (RISAT-2), equipped with a high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR), was launched from the space centre at Sriharikota in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh aboard the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)-developed polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV) C12 rocket.
"This is the first time we are working in the microwave band. With this, the satellite can see through clouds and identify objects on the ground very precisely," said ISRO chairman Madhvan Nair. According to Nair, RISAT-2 has been positioned at a forty-one degree inclination, enabling it to revisit a specific area at frequent intervals.
Nair declined to disclose the price paid to IAI for the RISAT-2, but said: "Normally a remote sensing satellite weighing one ton would cost around USD 16 million. This spacecraft is much smaller."
RISAT-2, placed in orbit 550 km above the Earth nineteen minutes after lift-off, will allow India's military and security agencies to effectively monitor the frontiers.
India claims Pakistan infiltrates Islamic insurgents across the disputed line of control in the northern Jammu and Kashmir province to fuel the two-decade-old insurgency there: a claim Islamabad has grudgingly conceded in the past.
The attack on India's capital, Mumbai, last November by ten Pakistan-based terrorists in which some 170 people died, along with increased incursions into Kashmir this year, hastened plans to launch the imaging satellite, officials said.
India's military also accuses China's People's Liberation Army of frequently infringing the unresolved frontier over which the two countries fought a war in 1962.
While Indian scientists played down Israel's involvement in providing the satellite and its obvious military applications, official sources conceded that RISAT-2 was similar to the Israeli TecSAR spy satellite the ISRO placed in orbit in January 2008 in a classified launch to which access was prohibited at Tel Aviv's request.
Indian security sources said TecSAR augmented Israel's intelligence-gathering capabilities providing twenty-four hour high resolution SAR imagery in all weather conditions at an affordable cost.
Jane's Defence Weekly
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