TGIF ... Thank Goodness It's Friday, is what will, no doubt, be on folks' minds that are preparing for the Friday launch of Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) launch of 31 satellites, including foreign nano satellites, onboard its workhorse PSLV on Friday. 

Cartosat 2 Series Earth observation satellite

The rocket, in its 40th flight, will lift off with Cartosat-2E, an Earth observation satellite, with 30 other nano satellites that will include 29 from 14 different countries, Austria, Belgium, Chile, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, the UK and the U.S. at 9:29 am from the first launch pad at Sriharikota spaceport. And there will be one nano satellite from India made by students of Noorul Islam University in Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu. The 712kg weighing Cartosat-2E is the sixth satellite in the Cartosat-2 series. It will provide regular remote sensing services using its panchromatic and multispectral cameras.

ISRO had a successful launch of its maiden developmental flight of its heavy rocket GSLV Mk-III earlier this month that provides encouragement for their upcoming launch of 31 satellites this Friday. These satellites will be in a 505km polar sun synchronous orbit.

The images sent by the satellite will be useful for cartographic applications, urban and rural applications, coastal land use and regulation, utility management like road network monitoring, water distribution, creation of land use maps, change detection to bring out geographical and man-made features and various other land information system (LIS) as well as geographical information system (GIS) applications.