Watch: ISRO launches India's best-ever high-resolution earth imaging satellite

Sriharikota: Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) today launched India's best-ever high-resolution earth imaging satellite, HysIS, from Andhra Pradesh's Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.

PSLV-C43 successfully injects Indian satellite HysIS, into sun-synchronous polar orbit. With HysIS, ISRO launched 30 other satellites on PSLV-C43.

The 28-hour countdown for the launch began at 5.58 am on Wednesday and the rocket blasted off at 9.58 am Thursday from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, about 110 km from Chennai, the space agency said. The Hyper Spectral Imaging Satellite (HysIS), an earth observation satellite developed by ISRO, is the primary satellite of the PSLV-C43 mission.

The primary goal of HysIS, whose mission life is five years, is to study the earth's surface invisible near infrared and shortwave infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The co-passengers of HysIS include 1 micro and 29 nanosatellites from eight countries--23 from the United States of America and one each from Australia, Canada, Colombia, Finland, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Spain.

This is ISRO's second launch in the month. The space agency had launched its latest communication satellite GSAT-29 on board GSLV MkIII-D2 on November 14.

(With PTI inputs)