Author: Habib Beary in Bangalore
Publication: BBC News
Date: November 27, 2001
India's Technology Experiment Satellite
(TES), which can be used as a spy satellite, has been beaming down what
space officials call "excellent pictures".
The Indian Space Research Organisation
(ISRO), based in this southern Indian city, is keeping the pictures under
wraps for strategic reasons.
"We have not got approval of the
government to release the pictures yet", ISRO officials say.
India is in possession of images
of the war in Afghanistan, official sources maintain.
TES, launched in October from the
Sriharikota launch pad on the east coast, is a precursor for the launch
of fully operational spy satellites.
The first high-resolution pictures
from its one-metre camera were taken over the temple town of Puri in Orissa
on the east coast.
"The pictures beamed by TES of the
temples are fantastic!" enthuse ISRO officials.
The temple images were shown to
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee last week, and he was delighted to
see them.
With TES in position, defence officials
say India can pick up images even of a truck moving along the border area
of Pakistan.
India has fought three wars with
Pakistan, two of them over the disputed territory of Kashmir.
Technical wizardry
TES can detect objects three-foot
long or more.
India is the second country in the
world after the USA that can offer images with one-metre resolution.
TES can be used for the mapping
industry and geographical information services, officials said.
Apart from US military satellites,
Ikonos, a private space company in the US, has a satellite that beams high
resolution images.
India has emerged as a key player
in the $1bn market for satellite images, jockeying with two well-established
names, Spot of France and Landsat of US.
Antrix Corporation, the corporate
arm of ISRO, sold images worth $7m in the global market last year.
The images beamed by five remote
sensing satellites excluding TES are being received and marketed from nine
international ground stations across the world.
With the success of TES, the ISRO
Satellite Centre in Bangalore will embark on manufacturing operational
remote sensing satellites that can double as spy satellites.
ISRO says its programmes are civilian-related,
and denies building spy satellites.
But as ISRO Chairman Dr.K.Kasturirangan
said after launching TES, "It will be for civilian use consistent with
our security concerns".
The 1,008kg satellite was launched
from a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).
The 44-metre PSLV rocket hurled
into polar orbit TES and two tiny satellites, one from European Space Agency
and the other from Germany.
These two satellites rode piggyback
on the Indian satellite.
