The surgical strikes were conducted by use of the Cartosat family of satellites, the last one (2c) launched in June this year. Sources in Isro said that the armed forces were aided by high-resolution images for the surgical strikes conducted across the line of control (LoC). A source in Isro told TOI, “We’ve been providing images to the armed forces, the army in particular. While I cannot comment if any specific image was sent on a particular day in the previous week, I can say that Cartosat images are meant for this purpose and the army has used this.”
“Cartosat also provided Area of Interest (AOI) based images for the armed forces,” the source said. Another explained that based on requests, one or more scenes/images covering the AOI as specified is provided in as a single polygon (all the areas in one circle) in the form of a shapefile (non-topological geometry and attribute information for the spatial features). Both Isro and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) have largely remained tight-lipped about the uses of the Cartosat family of satellites.
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What is Cartosat-2C?
Cartosat-2C is an Earth observation satellite in a sun-synchronous orbit and is a fifth flight unit of Cartosat series of satellites. The satellite carries a panchromatic (PAN) camera capable of taking black-and-white pictures in the visible region of electromagnetic spectrum. It was launched on June 22, 2016, from the second pad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre. While the first Cartosat was launched in 2005, Cartosat-2A launched in 2007 was the first dual-use satellite with capabilities of monitoring missile launches in India’s neighbourhood. This satellite can click pictures of areas of interest, and also record videos of sensitive targets from space, compress it, and relay it back to earth.
