RESOURCESAT-2A

RESOURCESAT-2A is an Earth-observation satellite operated by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and registered under NORAD catalog ID 41877, with the international designator 2016-074A. Launched on December 7, 2016 (UTC), it occupies a near-circular Sun-synchronous orbit and continues a lineage of Indian remote-sensing spacecraft designed to monitor land, water, and natural resources from above. As of the time of writing, the satellite remains operational in orbit, continuing to serve its role in the broader Resourcesat program.

Mission and Purpose

RESOURCESAT-2A represents the third generation in a family of Earth-observation missions that ISRO has developed over more than a decade. Its predecessors laid the groundwork: the first Resourcesat entered orbit in October 2003, establishing India's capability for systematic land-resource monitoring from space, and a second followed in April 2011 to extend and reinforce that capability. RESOURCESAT-2A was conceived as a continuity mission — ensuring that the services and data streams provided by its predecessors would not be interrupted as those earlier satellites aged.

The satellite's observational mandate is broad. At its core, the mission is oriented around land-use characterization — gathering regular, repeatable imagery that can reveal how agricultural land is being used, how crop coverage is distributed across seasons, and how forested areas are changing over time. This kind of systematic, time-series observation is essential for national planning agencies, environmental researchers, and agricultural ministries that need reliable data to make policy decisions.

Beyond agriculture and forestry, RESOURCESAT-2A contributes to understanding water bodies, including rivers, lakes, reservoirs, and coastal zones. Coastal monitoring is particularly valuable for a country like India, which manages an extensive shoreline with significant fishing, shipping, and ecological interests. The satellite's imagery can also assist in identifying surface expressions of mineral deposits, supporting geological surveys and resource planning.

Disaster management is another dimension of the mission's utility. When flooding, landslides, or other large-scale natural events occur, satellite imagery from a platform in a reliable, well-characterized orbit can be rapidly tasked and analyzed to assess damage extent, guide relief efforts, and monitor the progression of an event. The repeat-coverage capability of a sun-synchronous Earth-observation satellite makes it particularly suited to this role, since it passes over the same ground tracks at consistent local solar times, allowing meaningful before-and-after comparisons.

The satellite additionally provides what might be described as macro- and micro-level views of human settlement patterns — helping analysts distinguish between rural and urban land cover, track the spread of built-up areas, and document changes in land use over multi-year periods. This kind of urban-growth monitoring has become increasingly important as Indian cities have expanded rapidly in recent decades.

Orbit and Tracking

RESOURCESAT-2A operates in a Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO) — a specific class of low Earth orbit in which the orbital plane precesses at a rate that keeps it aligned with the Sun throughout the year. This design ensures that the satellite passes over any given location on Earth at approximately the same local solar time on every revisit, which is critical for remote sensing because consistent lighting conditions make it far easier to compare images taken weeks or months apart. Changes in vegetation, water levels, or land cover can be detected with much greater confidence when illumination angles remain stable.

The satellite's orbit is nearly circular. Its apogee stands at 827 km and its perigee at 822 km, giving an altitude spread of only 5 km — a very low eccentricity that reflects the precision with which the spacecraft was inserted into its planned orbit. At this altitude, it completes one full orbit of Earth approximately every 101.2 minutes, meaning it makes roughly 14 orbits per day. Over time, the combination of Earth's rotation beneath the satellite and the orbital geometry of its sun-synchronous configuration allows it to build up complete global coverage.

The orbital inclination of 98.8° is characteristic of sun-synchronous missions. Inclinations slightly beyond 90° (retrograde with respect to Earth's rotation) are the geometrical requirement for achieving the sun-synchronous condition at low-Earth altitudes — the slight westward tilt of the orbit allows the gravitational oblateness of Earth to drive the necessary precession of the orbital plane.

For tracking purposes, the satellite is indexed under NORAD catalog ID 41877 and carries the COSPAR international designator 2016-074A, indicating it was the primary payload (designator suffix "A") of the 74th launch of 2016. Ground-based radar networks and the public two-line element (TLE) data maintained by space surveillance organizations allow its position to be predicted with high accuracy at any given time.

Design and Operator

RESOURCESAT-2A was built and is operated by ISRO, India's national space agency, which has been conducting Earth-observation missions since the 1970s. ISRO has developed considerable indigenous expertise in designing, manufacturing, and operating remote-sensing spacecraft, and the Resourcesat series represents one of the more mature and consistently successful threads of that work.

The satellite's precise manufacturer within the ISRO establishment is not recorded in the public catalog entry, and its mass is similarly not listed in the available verified data. This is not uncommon for satellites in this class; detailed technical specifications are sometimes held within agency documentation and not comprehensively reflected in the open international registry.

What is clearly established is the spacecraft's operational context: it carries imaging instruments suited to land and resource observation, continuing the instrument heritage of earlier Resourcesat missions. The program has been associated with multi-spectral cameras capable of imaging at varying resolutions, allowing both fine-grained local analysis and broader regional surveys, though the specific instrument configuration aboard RESOURCESAT-2A is drawn from program-level continuity rather than from independently verified catalog specifics.

ISRO shares data from its Earth-observation missions with a variety of national agencies, research institutions, and international partners. India has positioned its remote-sensing program as both a domestic resource-management tool and a contribution to global environmental monitoring efforts. The Resourcesat series, in particular, has been used by agricultural ministries to generate national crop acreage and production estimates — a use case with direct economic and food-security implications.

Current Status and Significance

RESOURCESAT-2A remains in orbit as of the current date and has not undergone any cataloged decay or reentry event. Its orbit, maintained at roughly 822–827 km altitude with a period of 101.2 minutes and an inclination of 98.8°, is well above the atmospheric drag levels that would cause rapid orbital decay, suggesting the satellite is capable of remaining in its operational configuration for many years absent any unforeseen anomaly.

The satellite's broader significance lies in what it represents within the arc of India's space program. By the time RESOURCESAT-2A launched in December 2016, ISRO had accumulated more than four decades of experience in remote sensing, and the Resourcesat program itself had proven its value over thirteen years of operational use. The decision to field a continuity spacecraft before the earlier Resourcesats had failed reflects a mature operational posture — one in which maintaining the data record is treated as a strategic priority, not an afterthought.

For the community of users who depend on land-observation data — agricultural planners, hydrologists, disaster response coordinators, urban geographers, mining surveyors — the uninterrupted flow of imagery from a known, stable platform matters enormously. Gaps in the data record can complicate trend analysis and reduce confidence in derived products. RESOURCESAT-2A was, in this sense, as much a data-continuity asset as a new capability.

More broadly, RESOURCESAT-2A contributes to the growing international ecosystem of Earth-observation satellites that together provide humanity with a continuously updated view of the planet's surface. It is one of dozens of satellites worldwide performing similar functions, but its role within India's sovereign remote-sensing architecture gives it particular national importance.

How to Spot It

RESOURCESAT-2A orbits at an altitude of approximately 822–827 km, which places it firmly in low Earth orbit and within range of visual observation under the right conditions. Like most satellites in sun-synchronous orbits, it will be visible from Earth's surface as a steadily moving point of light — neither flashing nor changing color — crossing the sky in the span of a few minutes. The best viewing opportunities occur during twilight hours, shortly after sunset or before sunrise, when the observer on the ground is in darkness but the satellite, at altitude, is still illuminated by sunlight. Its inclination of 98.8° means that it passes nearly over the poles and can be seen from a very wide range of latitudes. The specific brightness of the satellite at any moment depends on its orientation and the geometry of the observation; its predicted passes at your location can be computed using the NORAD tracking ID 41877, which is indexed in this site's tracking tools.