ASM
Trouble for ISRO's Cartosat-2?
Potential users are still waiting for word from the Indian Space Research Organisation on the fate of the Cartosat-2 mission.
The satellite was launched on 10 January this year. Two days later, ISRO issued a press release announcing that it had switched on the panchromatic camera on the satellite. It claimed to have received data from the National Remote Sensing Agency's data reception station at Shadnagar, near Hyderabad. This data, it said, confirmed the 'excellent performance of the camera'.
ISRO said the first images 'covered a length of about 240 kilometres from Paonta Sahib in Shivalik region to Delhi. Another set of imagery covered an area of about 50 kilometres from Radha Nagari to Sagoan in Goa'.
However, since 12 January, the organisation has made no more announcements relating to Cartosat-2.
In April, Antrix, the commercial organisation that sells data from Indian satellites on the open market, said it had obtained two images from Cartosat-2 - one of Perth in Western Australia, and one of Hyderabad.
It published a price list for international imagery in July - but only for data sourced from the older Resourcesat-1 and Cartosat-1 satellites.
The delay is unfortunate for the Indians. Many organisations around the world had been hoping to switch from Landsat to Cartosat following the partial failure of Landsat-7 last year.
By press time this week, officials in Bangalore had not responded to emailed requests from ASM for comments on this story.
