Overview
- India launched GISAT-1A (EOS-05) aboard GSLV-F17 from Satish Dhawan on Friday, Sept. 4, marking the heaviest satellite yet carried by a GSLV at 2,367 kg.
- The spacecraft completed its first long-duration Liquid Apogee Motor orbit-raising burn on Saturday, Sept. 5, placing it in an interim roughly 20,000 km × 31,129 km orbit with further burns planned to reach the geosynchronous slot near 85.5° East.
- ISRO says EOS-05 is designed to provide persistent, multi- and hyperspectral imaging with sector images roughly every five minutes and full-India coverage about every 30 minutes at spatial resolutions in the tens of metres.
- The satellite is intended as a continuous overwatch layer to flag floods, cyclones, fires, crop stress and maritime activity for tasking by higher-resolution low-Earth-orbit satellites, and ISRO expects about a nine-year operational life.
- The mission is framed as a recovery from the 2021 GISAT-1 failure and fits into India’s broader move toward a layered surveillance architecture that pairs GEO persistent sensors with a proliferated LEO constellation and growing private-sector involvement.