The 28-hour countdown for the launch of the PSLV C38 rocket carrying India’s Cartost-2 Series satellite and 30 other co-passenger payloads, has begun Thursday morning at 5.29 hours.  In the 40th flight of the launch vehicle PSLV, the satellites would be slung into a 505-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit on Friday, after its lift off at Nine-Twenty Nine hours from Sriharikotta.

Out of the 30 co-passenger nano-satellites, 29 belong to foreign customers from 14 countries. The lone domestic nano-satellite is from an educational institution in Kanyakumari district. The Cartosat-2 Series is a remote sensing satellite, with a mission life of five years. It is similar to five of its peers that were launched earlier, and contain panchromatic and multi-sectoral cameras.  Their data are useful for cartographic applications, urban and rural planning, coastal land use regulation, road network monitoring and land and geographical information system applications.