Indian Rocket to Carry 7 Satellites in Feb 25 Launch
Curiously the STRaND-1 (Surrey Training, Research, and Nanosatellite Demonstrator) is the world's first 'smart phone satellite' carrying Google Nexus One phone running on Android operating system.
The four-kg satellite is a Britain mission, jointly developed by the University of Surrey's Surrey Space Centre (SSC) and Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL),
The phone will run several applications including collection of data; take pictures of the earth with its camera.
Once all the satellite's own operating systems have been checked out, key system functions will be transferred to the phone's components to take control and operate the satellite, said SSTL in its website.
According to CSA, the satellite NEOSSat will detect and track asteroids and satellites circling the globe every 100 minutes and scanning space near the Sun to pin point otherwise almost invisible asteroids.
The satellite will also be useful in tracking resident space objects including space debris.
On the other hand Sapphire will look for resident space objects that include functioning satellites and space debris circling between 6,000 km and 40,000 km above the earth.
The Feb 25 launch is the first of the 10 space missions that ISRO has planned for 2013.
The government told the Parliament last year that ISRO is planning to accomplish 10 space missions in the next one year with eight of them planned by September 2013 and the remaining two by 2013-end.
The missions are three polar satellite launch vehicles, one geosynchronous satellite launch vehicle, two communication satellites, one earth observation (ocean) satellite, one meteorological satellite, one navigation satellite and Mars orbiter.
