Chennai, Sept 1:
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO has officially announced that the the launch of Earth Observation Satellite (EOS-05) by the heavylift home grown GSLV rocket will place place on September four early morning at 0255 hrs from the spaceport of Sriharikota.
In an update on X, the Space Agency said “GSLV-F17/EOS-05 Mission is scheduled for launch on 04 Sept 2026 at 02:55 AM IST from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, SHAR, Sriharikota.”
Earlier, while announcing the Mission, ISRO did not specify the launch date, which was now officially confirmed by it today.
Nearly five years after the August 21, 2021 unsuccessful GISAT-1 mission by GSLV-F10 due to a glitch in the cryogenic third upper stage, ISRO will launch the EOS-05 spacecraft, also known as GISAT-1A. It will be India’s first ever imaging satellite to operate from the Sub-Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO), using the heavy lift launch vehicle GSLV-MkII
The launch from the Second Launch Pad, will take place on the early morning of September four at 0255 hrs and preparations are underway for the mission being undertaken after a short gap.
The EOS-05 will be launched by GSLV-F17, the 19th flight of India’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), and the configuration of GSLV-F17 Payload Fairing is 4 m dia Ogive (composite) version.
“The three-stage, 51.7 m tall GSLV-F17, with a lift off mass of 420.5 tonnes ,will place the EOS-05 satellite into a Sub-GTO. After the lift off, the 2,367 kg spacecraft will be injected into the Sub-GTO with a perigee of 170 km and an apogee of 28,934 km with an inclination of about 19.28 Deg (with plus or minus one) to the equator.
“EOS-05 is a state-of-the-art Earth observation spacecraft. It is India’s first ever imaging satellite from Geosynchronous orbit”, it said.
EOS-05 is designed to capture detailed images of the Earth and provide data for monitoring and other applications that require regular observation of the land and environment. It aims to improve the existing remote sensing capabilities and GISATs are designed to image in multi-spectral and hyper-spectral bands to provide near real-time pictures of large areas of the country, under cloud-free conditions, at frequent intervals which is, selected field image in every 5 minutes and entire Indian landmass image every 30 minutes at 42 metres (138 ft) spatial resolution.
EOS-05 is a replacement for GISAT-1A, which was lost in an unsuccessful mission in 2021 and the proposed mission will be closely watched following the twin two successive failures of PSLV mission in 2025 and early 2026.
ISRO has ventured into the mission after temporarily pausing launches to investigate the causes of the setbacks involving the launch vehicle. The failures had raised concerns, making the GSLV-F17/EOS-05 mission particularly significant as the space agency seeks to reinforce confidence in its launch programme. The satellite is expected to strengthen India’s capabilities in Earth imaging.