RISAT-2, India's first satellite carrying a synthetic aperture radar, is the subject of this short piece. Built by ISRO as part of the RISAT programme, the 300 kg satellite was launched on a PSLV-CA rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on 20 April 2009, with the ANUSAT student microsatellite as a secondary payload. Its X-band radar, supplied by Israel Aerospace Industries in return for launch services for Israel's TecSAR satellite, gives it day-and-night, all-weather imaging for border monitoring, anti-infiltration and anti-terrorist operations and for tracking hostile ships at sea. The article notes that the satellite was built at an accelerated pace after the 2008 Mumbai attacks because the indigenous C-band sensor for RISAT-1 had been delayed, and that although ISRO played down its defence role the Indian media widely called it a 'spy satellite'.
It closes with the tense hours before launch, when a fallen umbilical cord damaged six connectors on the rocket, and with RISAT-2's later use in locating the wreckage of the helicopter crash that killed Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy on 2 September 2009.
