Late last month, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced its first mission of 2018 – the launch of 31 satellites, including earth observation spacecraft Cartosat on January 10. However, ISRO announced thatthe launch date has now been changed to January 12, Friday .

“The rocket launch to carry Cartosat and other satellites, including 28 from the US and five other countries, will take place on January 12 at 9.30 a.m.,” Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Public Relations Director Devi Prasad Karnik  told Media. All the 31 satellites, including India’s own Cartosat-2 series Earth Observation spacecraft, will be launched at a time onboard its Polar rocket.

The satellite launch mission will be the first Polar Satellite Launch (PSLV) mission since August. In the month of August, PSLV’s launch of the navigation satellite IRNSS-1H became unsuccessful.

This time PSLV mission’s main payload will be India’s Cartosat-2 series earth observation satellite.

The 31 satellites include 28 nano satellites from countries outside India including the US and Finland. The rest three satellites include a micro satellite and a nano satellite and a larger Cartosat satellite of India.

Back in August, the PSLV-C39 launch, carrying the backup navigation satellite IRNSS-1H, became a failure owing to a technical fault that occurred during the final leg after a perfect launch. ISRO finally was able to trace the reasons for the  unsuccessful launch and informed that the heat shield did not separate on the final leg of the launch sequence. Hence, the IRNSS-1H satellite got stuck in the fourth stage of the rocket said Anna Durai speaking to the media on Tuesday morning.

Informing about the upcoming launch, ISRO said that Cartosat-2 series satellite launch is a follow-on mission with the main aim of delivering high-resolution scene-specific spot imageries. ISRO said that the Cartosat-2 satellite has Panchromatic and Multi-spectral cameras fitted inside it that operate in Time Delay Integration and have the capability of providing high-resolution data.

The upcoming launch of the Cartosat satellite will be the third installation of the Cartosat-2 series. Earlier in February, PSLV-C37 launched the first Cartosat-2 series satellite along with a record 103 satellites at a time. Again in June, another Cartosat-2 series satellite was launched along with 30 co-passenger satellites in a single flight. This marked the 39th consecutive successful mission of PSLV.