Sriharikota: With the launch of HysIS, India has joined an elite club of a few countries that produce satellites which work in the hyperspectral range.
Isro chairman Dr K. Sivan said that the heart of the satellite was a critical chip, the optical imaging detector array, designed by the Satellite Applications Centre and fabricated by Semi-Conductor Laboratory at Chandigarh.
Reacting to a question on the HysIS’ application for strategic or defence purposes, Dr Sivan said that it was Isro’s duty to build the satellite to identify the object clearly. The actual usage of the data is left for the users.
The primary goal of HysIS is to study the earth’s surface in visible, near infrared and shortwave infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, he said. Hyperspectral imaging is an imaging spectroscopy which combines the power of digital imaging and spectroscopy. This imaging technology enables to distinguish objects on the earth by reading the spectrum for each pixel of an item seen from the space.
The effort in hyperspectral imaging is to obtain the spectrum for each pixel in the image. This is used to find objects and identify materials. The satellite can read up to 1,000x66 pixels.
On the manned space mission, Dr Sivan said the first unmanned mission, which is a prelude for the actual manned mission, is being scheduled for December 2020. There will be another mission before the human space mission by 2022. He said the process for Gaganyaan, the manned space mission, was going on the right direction.
Asked about the training to be provided to Indian astronauts Dr Sivan said the plan was to develop most of the facilities within the country and for some training they may have to go overseas.
The next launch will be a communication satellite, GSAT-11, from French Guiana on December 5 which will followed by GSAT-7A by the the GSLV F-11 from Shar.
