Sriharikota (Andhra Pradesh): Marking success after Chandrayaan-2 setback, India on Wednesday successfully placed into orbit its own earth observation satellite Cartosat-3 and 13 American nano satellites in a text book style.

In the process, India crossed the milestone of putting into orbit 300 foreign satellites. By putting the 13 American nano satellites into orbit, India till date has launched a total of 310 foreign satellites for a fee.

Meanwhile, Cartosat-3, India’s new earth observation satellite up in the sky will send sharp clarity images for urban planning, rural resource and infrastructure development, coastal land use and land cover and also for strategic/defence purposes.

The Indian space agency officials said they would supply the required images for various agencies. It is for the user agency to decide on the image use.

The images captured by the satellite can also be used for surveillance purposes while ISRO is silent on this aspect.

The satellitea¿s payload has the capability of take sharp pictures with a ground resolution of 0.25 metre in Panchromatic and 1metre ground resolution or ground sample distance (GSD) in 4 Band Multispectral modes with a swath of 16 km, said ISRO.

The Indian space agency also said, Cartosat-3 has many new technologies/elements like highly agile structural platform, payload platform, higher rate data handling and transmission systems, advanced onboard computer and new power electronics, dual gimbal antenna and others.

“Extremely happy to declare PSLV-C47 precisely injected Cartosat-3 and 13 customer satellites in their desired orbit. Cartosat-3 is India’s highest resolution civilian spacecraft that ISRO has built so far,” ISRO Chairman K. Sivan said.

He said ISRO has planned 13 missions during this fiscal — six launch vehicle missions and 7 satellite missions before March 2020.