RISAT-2 Satellite

Context

ISRO’s RISAT-2 satellite, launched in 2009, has made an uncontrolled re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. It re-entered the Indian Ocean near Jakarta on October 30.

RISAT 2

It is India’s first dedicated reconnaissance satellite(intelligence satellite or referred to as a spy satellite).
It was developed following the 2008 Mumbai attacks, due to a delay in getting information with the RISAT -1
It was launched by the PSLV-C12 launch vehicle 13 years ago in 2009.
The satellite has a mass of 300 kg (660 lb).
It utilises X-band synthetic-aperture radar (SAR)
It possesses day-night as well as all-weather monitoring capability.
Potential applications include tracking hostile ships at sea that are deemed a military threat to India.
It is designed to monitor India’s borders and as part of anti-infiltration and anti-terrorist operations.

Re-entry

ISRO said that though the initial designed life of the satellite was four years, due to proper maintenance of orbit and mission planning by the spacecraft operations team in ISRO and by economical usage of fuel, RISAT-2 provided very useful payload data for 13 years.
Since its injection, RISAT-2’s radar payload services were provided for various space applications. On re-entry, there was no fuel left in the satellite and hence there are no contaminations or explosion by fuel is expected. Studies confirmed that the pieces generated due to aero-thermal fragmentation would not have survived reentry heating and hence no fragments would have impacted on Earth,” ISRO said.
The orbital data available from USSPACECOM were regularly used to predict the re-entry time and impact.

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