INSAT and IRS Satellite
Services
IRS
Indian Remote Sensing satellites
IRS
• Indian Remote Sensing satellites (IRS) are a series of
Earth Observation satellites, built, launched and
maintained by Indian Space Research Organization ISRO
• The IRS series provides many remote sensing services to
India.
• The IRS system is the largest constellation of remote
sensing satellites for civilian use in operation today in the
world, with 12 operational satellites.
• All these are placed in polar sun-synchronous orbit and
provide data in a variety of spatial, spectral and temporal
resolutions
Remote Sensing
IRS System
• Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellite program
supports the national economy in the areas of
• Agriculture,
• Water resources,
• Forestry and Ecology,
• Geology,
• Water sheds,
• Marine fisheries and
• Coastal management
IRS System
• India established the National Natural Resources
Management System (NNRMS) for which the
Department of Space (DOS) is the nodal agency,
providing operational remote sensing data services.
• Data from the IRS satellites is received and disseminated
by several countries all over the world.
• With the advent of high-resolution satellites new
applications in the areas of urban sprawl,
infrastructure planning and other large scale
applications for mapping have been initiated.
IRS Applications
IRS data applications
• Preharvest crop area and production estimation of major crops.
• Drought monitoring and assessment based on vegetation condition.
• Flood risk zone mapping and flood damage assessment.
• Hydro-geomorphological maps for locating underground water resources for
drilling well.
• Irrigation command area status monitoring
• Snow-melt run-off estimates for planning water use in down stream projects
• Land use and land cover mapping
• Urban planning
• Forest survey
• Wetland mapping
• Environmental impact analysis
• Mineral Prospecting
• Coastal studies
• Integrated Mission for Sustainable Development - integrated land and water
resources development in 174 districts.
Satellite data acquisition and processing
• The National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) at
Hyderabad is the nodal agency for reception,
archival, processing and dissemination of remote
sensing data in the country.
• NRSC acquires and processes data from all Indian
remote sensing satellites like CARTOSAT-1,
CARTOSAT-2, RESOURCESAT-1, IRS-1D,
OCEANSAT-1 and TES as well as foreign
satellites like Terra, NOAA and ERS.
Future IRS launches
• Following are the remote sensing satellites
planned by ISRO to be launched next
strengthening the fleet of IRS satellites and
widening their applications:
• Reseourcesat-3
• Cartosat-3
• Oceansat-3
INSAT
Indian National Satellite System
INSAT
• INSAT or the Indian National Satellite System is
a series of multipurpose Geo-stationary satellites
launched by ISRO to satisfy the
telecommunications, broadcasting, meteorology,
and search and rescue operations.
• It is the largest domestic communication system
in the Asia Pacific Region. It is a joint venture of
the Department of Space, Department of
Telecommunications, India Meteorological
Department, All India Radio and Doordarshan
INSAT
• INSAT satellites provide transponders in various
bands (C, S, Extended C and Ku) to serve the
television and communication needs of India.
• Some of the satellites also have the Very High
Resolution Radiometer (VHRR), CCD cameras
for metrological imaging.
• The satellites also incorporate transponder(s) for
receiving distress alert signals for search and
rescue missions in the South Asian and Indian
Ocean Region, as ISRO is a member of the
Cospas-Sarsat programme.
INSAT - Satellites in Service
• INSAT-2E
• INSAT-3A
• INSAT-3C
• INSAT-3E
• KALPANA-1
• GSAT-2
• EDUSAT
• INSAT-4A
• INSAT-4B
• Glitch in INSAT 4B
• China-Stuxnet Connection
• INSAT-4CR
• GSAT-8 / INSAT-4G
• GSAT-12
