Here are the 20 satellites being launched by ISRO

India is all set to break its own record of launching 20 satellites aboard the PSLV C34, from its Satish Dhawan Space Center in Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota on Wednesday.

Of different shapes and sizes, ISRO’s 20 satellites comprise of CubeSats which are less than one Kilogram to more massive Earth Observation Satellites.

The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle C-34 (PSLV) will carry India’s latest earth observation Cartosat-2 Series satellite along with 19 co-passenger satellites including those made by Indian students and belonging to foreign vendors like the US, Germany, Canada and Indonesia.

The foremost 727-Kilogram CartoSat-2C, is part of India’s second generation of Earth Observation Spacecraft dedicated to environmental monitoring and cartography.

CartoSat-2C will be riding as the primary payload and will be first to separate from the rocket after sixteen and a half minutes of powered flight into a 505-Kilometer orbit, inclined 97.5 degrees, Space Flight News stated in a report.

This satellite will deliver high-resolution black-and-white images of the planet at a ground resolution of 65 centimeters while colour imagery will be available at a two-meter resolution.

The other satellites launched by ISRO include:

1. BIROS - The fire detection mission satellites operated by the German Aerospace center.

2. GHGSat-D - The Greenhouse Gas Satellite, developed at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies Space Flight Laboratory. 

3. M3M Sat, the Maritime Monitoring and Messaging Microsatellite, is a Canadian Space technology satellite. 

4. SkySat C1 - the first of 19 operational Earth Observation Satellites, developed by a Californian based company.

5. LAPAN-A3 is a microsatellite, whose purpose is threefold including high-resolution imagery for Earth Observation Purposes, a voice repeater in disaster mitigation and collect Automatic Identification System data for maritime monitoring. It also includesa technical demonstrator testing and was developed in a partnership between Indonesia and Technical University of Berlin.

6. Planet Labs Doves is a cluster of 12 satellites operated by Planet Labs in San Francisco to obtain high-resolution images of Earth.

7. SathyabamaSat (SB Sat) is a 2-Unit CubeSat whose sole mission is to study atmospheric species bult by Sathyabama University, India. 

8. Swayam is a 1-Unit CubeSat to develop a space-based bi-directional communications platforms built by College of Engineering, Pune (COEP).