Cartosat-1 (formerly IRS-P5) is a stereoscopic Earth observation satellite in a Sun-synchronous orbit, and the first one of the Cartosat series of satellites. The eleventh satellite of ISRO in Indian Remote Sensing Satellite (IRS) series. The satellite was launched by Indian Space Research Organisation and is operated by NTRO. Weighing around 1560 kg at launch, its applications will mainly be towards cartography in India. Launch It was launched by PSLV-C6, on 5 May 2005 at 04:44:00 UTC from the newly built Second Launch Pad at Sriharikota. Images from the satellite will be available from GeoEye for worldwide distribution. The satellite covers the entire globe in 1867 orbits on a 126-day cycle. Adjacent paths are covered by a separation of eleven days. History Department of Space (DOS), government of India, has launched a series of satellites for Earth's resource management and monitoring. These satellites have been very successful in providing data in various scales ranging from 1:1 million to 1:12,500 scale. Each of the Indian Remote Sensing satellite missions ensured data continuity while introducing improvements in the spatial, spectral and radiometric resolutions. Considering increase demand for large scale and topographic mapping data DOS launched the Cartosat-1 in 2005. Cartosat-1 is dedicated to stereo viewing for large scale mapping and terrain modelling. Specifications Payload Cartosat-1 carries two state-of-the-art panchromatic (PAN) cameras that take black and white stereoscopic pictures of the Earth in the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The swath covered by these high resolution PAN cameras is 30 km and their spatial resolution is 2.5 metres. For acquire two images simultaneously, one forward (PAN FORE) looking at +26° and one aft (PAN AFT) of the satellite at -5° for near instantaneous stereo data. The time difference between the acquisitions of the same scene by the two cameras is about 52 seconds. The spacecraft body is steerable to compensate the Earth rotation effect and to force both fore and aft cameras to look at the same ground strip when operated in stereo mode. The cameras are mounted on the satellite in such a way that near simultaneous imaging of the same area from two different angles is possible. This facilitates the generation of accurate three-dimensional maps. The cameras are steerable across the direction of the satellite's movement to facilitate the imaging of an area more frequently. Communications The images taken by Cartosat-1 cameras are compressed, encrypted, formatted and transmitted to the