Written by Nayantara Singh, a grade 7 student

Monday. 14th February is an important day for ISRO – the Indian Space Research Organisation – India’s national space agency, based in Bengaluru.

What’s happening?

ISRO’s first mission for 2022 is being launched on Monday, 14^th February.

What’s the mission called?

It’s called the PSLV-C52/EOS-04, and it’s an earth observation satellite. It was supposed to be launched last year but it got delayed twice because of the pandemic.

This year is set to be the busiest year for ISRO since it was founded! There are about 19 launches being planned for 2022! This includes ones like the Chandrayaan-3 and the Gaganyaan mission.

Tell me about this one, what does the name mean?

Let’s break it down, because the name can be confusing.

PSLV stands for Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. The EOS stands for Earth Observation Satellite, which the PSLV will carry with it. It is the fourth in a series of earth observation satellites, so it’s called EOS-04.

What does the EOS-04 do?

EOS-04 is a satellite that captures and provide high-quality images under all weather conditions for applications such as Agriculture, Forestry and Plantations, Soil Moisture and Hydrology and Flood mapping. It will also be great for India’s border security.

Is this the only satellite that’s being launched tomorrow?

There are two more, apart from the EOS-04. They are smaller and are called – INSPIREsat-1 and INS-2TD.

The first one will examine the upper atmosphere and also solar flares (a solar flare is a massive flare explosion on the Sun that takes place when energy is suddenly released).

Here’s an interesting thing to know about INSPIREsat-1. It was developed by the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology in collaboration with the University of Colorado in the United States.

And, here’s the fun part – students from two universities, one called the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the other was National Central University of Taiwan – also contributed to the development of this satellite!

The other one INS-2TD, is what’s called a “technology demonstrator satellite” – which basically means that it’s used for testing technology and ideas.

What’s a satellite?

Put simply, a satellite is an object in space that circles around a bigger object.

And there are two kinds of satellites.

The natural ones, like the moon (because it goes around the Earth). Then there are the man-made ones, like the one we just told you about – that are sent into space by humans for studying many different things.

Fun Fact: The first artificial satellite was a Russian one called Sputnik, which was a space probe launched in October 1957.

So, do watch out for the news on PSLV-C52/EOS-04 tomorrow!

If you love space stuff, you can read more about other interesting stuff in our space section!

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