ISRO to Launch Satellite Mapping Service

Taking the global geo-mapping service Google Earth head-on, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) says it plans to launch its own satellite imaging system on its website within six months.

"We are going to launch our own satellite images on the web within six months from now. Our images are quite good and even better than Google," ISRO chairman G. Madhavan Nair dislosed on Thursday.

He said certain locations with security risks have been prohibited by law from being imaged. "These locations will not be there, but the remaining places would definitely be on the Net," he said.

ISRO launched the PSLV C-9 with two satellites CARTOSAT-2A and IMS-1 last month.

"With the lunch of eight nano-satellites, India has become the world's second country, after Russia, to launch multi-satellites with Polar Satellite Launch Vehicles (PSLV)," he said.

Nair said the Remote Sensing Satellites (RSS) provide imagery of the earth in a variety of spectral bands and with a resolution better than one metre.

"Data from our RSS are received at about 20 different stations across various parts of the world, including the US and Europe," he said.