China for World super power in next 40 years, page 19

Originally posted by chinawhite

The figures i got for IRS P6 are 23.5m for a 140km swath
And the ZY-1 which has a 20m at 113km.

So I think these satillies are about even when it comes to resoultion while indias one being the more advanced satillite, while the ZY-1 being launched eariler in 1999 compared to 2003. China has had digtial transmision photos of 50m since 1987, So being 20m in resolution is not what i would say hard to achieve

Source
bharat-rakshak
Sinodefence

I would suspect the ZY-2 would at least have a improvment on the ZY-1 seeing as how china launched two in two years. (2000 and 2002).

EDIT: You were right about a 2004 launch. China launched its thrid satillie of the ZY-2 in 2004. So maybe you might be getting confused with another event?

[edit on 21-1-2006 by chinawhite]

YEs.. indeed there was some confusion on my part as the I thought the ZY-2 was just on satellite and not a SERIES of satellites;
(now three of them: ZY-2 1/2/3 or A/B/C), the latest in November 2004.
Unfortuantely we have info pertaining to the ZY-2 and not indivisual satelllites, and so we have to assume that the ZY-2 series will give the chinese a wider region of simultaneous watch, but since no separate resolution has been published, the res are assumed to be same.
Here's what each satellite has:

The latest ZY-2 spatial resolution is thought to be "lower than 20m"(couldn't get a more exact figure than that !

)

The thing is each sat has more than one sensor, each one haveing different spatial resolutions(IGFOV) and swath widths. That's where both of us were getting confused!!!

For Zy-1:
1)# CCD Camera: Five bands (0.51-0.73 µm, 0.45-0.52 µm, 0.52-0.59 µm, 0.63-0.69, µm, and 0.77-0.89.µm); 20-m resolution; 113 km swath;

2)# IR Multi-Spectral Scanner: Four bands (0.50-1.10 µm, 1.55-1.75 µm, 2.08-2.35 µm,and 10.40-12.50 µm); 80-160-m resolution; 120-km swath;

3)# Wide-Field Imager: Two bands (0.63-0.69 µm and 0.76-0.90 µm); 260-m resolution; 900-km swath.

For IRS P-6:

Check out the table at the end of the bharat rakshak page you gave a link to.

1)The LISS-4 sensor has the highest spatial resolution (IGFOV) of 5.8 meters at NADIR(the region right below the satellite). It swath of 24 km in MX(multipsectral)mode and 70.3km in PAN mode.

2) The LISS-3 sensor has a sp res of 23.5m(NADIR) and 141km swath.

3)The AiWFS has sp res and swath of 56m and 740km respectively
(Not 1400km as I previously mentioned

)

So the best res is 5.8m (comm) and swath is 740km (comm) for the IRS P6, as compared to "less than 20m" res and swath (unknown) of hte ZY-2 series.
Anyways the swath is not the point of debate here.

You can confirm these IRS -P6 commercial resolutions at :

SpaceImaging.com

Now here's the surprise:

On May 5th 2005, ISRO launched PSLV-6 with a payload consisting of 2 new satellites. The one called CARTOSAT is of interest to us.

1)CARTOSAT-1 (IRS-P5) don't ask why the nos. reduce instaed of increasing !

It has a commercial spatial res of 2.5m(claimed to be < 2.5m) and a swath of 30km.
Google for CARTOSAT-1.
No pictures have been released online, space imaging was going to get exclusive rights for marketing cartosat pics outside india, don't know what happened to that..
source

But the satellite's up and running.

In comparision, IKONOS has a spatial res of 1-4 metres.

And finally ISRO plans the launch CARTOSAT-2 in 2006, which is supposed to have a spatial res of 1m.
So correct me if I'm wrong but IMO India's still ahead for now and maybe all of 2006 with CARTOSAT-2.

The funny thing is I don't quite think India and China are competing for a "space race" in any way. We have different goals, and infact I have seen signs of co-operation in this field.

India recently launched two satellites into the space using a polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. One of these two was a remote sensing satellite named Cartosat-1. Now the ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) has reported that as many as four countries have shown interest in using its applications. The four countries are China, Japan, Germany, and the UAE.

source

Although the west sees this (or maybe hopes to see this) as space race
source

I now feel that India views its relationship with the US as one totally independant of China. It does not view this relationship as a "counterbalance" to "suppress" chinese emrgence.

EDIT: Awesome pics google_abcd! I have a Saved Sim City3000 game which looks like that!

So you've buried that hatchet you dug up aye??

[edit on 22-1-2006 by Daedalus3]