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India to launch 3 more satellites for better weather forecast

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

New Delhi, Feb 15, IRNA
India-Satellites-Weather
Three more satellites are about to join India's fleet to forecast ravaging cyclones and monsoon.

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) will launch its indigenously built INSAT-3D and Oceansat-2 satellites next year.

"The INSAT-3D satellite will be one of the three weather satellites that ISRO will launch in the next couple of years," Abhijit Sarkar, a scientist at the Space Applications Centre (SAC) of ISRO said in Ahmedabad in the western Indian state of Gujarat on Wednesday.

"INSAT-3D will be a geo-stationary satellite and will be launched in 2008," Sarkar said. "It will carry two sensors: a high-resolution radiometer which will monitor rainfall, sea surface temperature and cloud movements and a sounder, which will give profiles of temperature and humidity," he added.

Geo-stationary satellites orbit the Earth's equatorial plane at a height of 38,500 kilometers. At this height, the satellite's orbit matches the rotation of the Earth so the satellite seems to stay stationary over the same point on the equator, Sarkar elucidated.

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