New Delhi:The 28-hour countdown for the launch of the PSLV C38 rocket carrying India’s Cartost-2 Series satellite and 30 other co-passenger payloads, begun on Thursday morning at 5.29 hours.
This is space agency ISRO’s  second launch during the month.It closely follows the recent successful maiden test flight of the GSLV Mark-III launch vehicle.

In the 40th flight of the launch vehicle PSLV, the satellites would be slung into a 505-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit on Friday, after its lift off at Nine-Twenty Nine hours from Sriharikotta.

Out of the 30 co-passenger nano-satellites, 29 belong to foreign customers from 14 countries. The lone domestic nano-satellite is from an educational institution in Kanyakumari district.

The Cartosat-2 Series is a remote sensing satellite, with a mission life of five years. It is similar to five of its peers that were launched earlier, and contain panchromatic and multi-sectoral cameras. Their data are useful for cartographic applications, urban and rural planning, coastal land use regulation, road network monitoring and land and geographical information system applications.