Countdown begins for Oceansat-2 launch

The countdown for the launch of Oceansat-2 satellite that would help identify potential fishing zones and in coastal zone studies from Sriharikota.

The 970-kg satellite would be shot into space on September 23 by Indian Space Research Organisation's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) along with six European nano spacecrafts.

A set of two Rubin nano and four cubeats would also ride piggyback, accompanying Oceansat-2, on the homegrown PSLV rocket that will blast off from the Satish Dhavan Space Centre at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh.

Apart from two Rubin nano satellites from Germany, the four cubesats lined up for the mission are: Beesat, built by Technical University Berlin, UWE-2 (University of Wuerzburg Germany), ITU-pSat (Istanbul Technical University Turkey) and SwissCube-1 (Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne, Switzerland).