Indian Remote Sensing satellites (IRS) are a series of Earth Observation satellites, built, launched and maintained by Indian Space Research Organisation. The IRS series provides many remote sensing services to India.
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Following the successful demonstration flights of Bhaskara-1 and Bhaskara-2 satellites launched in 1979 and 1981, respectively, India began to develop the indigenous Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellite program to support the national economy in the areas of agriculture, water resources, forestry and ecology, geology, water sheds, marine fisheries and coastal management.
Towards this end, India established the National Natural Resources Management System (NNRMS) for which the Department of Space (DOS) is the nodal agency, providing operational remote sensing data services.[1] Data from the IRS satellites is received and disseminated by several countries all over the world. With the advent of high-resolution satellites new applications in the areas of urban sprawl, infrastructure planning and other large scale applications for mapping have been initiated.
The IRS system is the largest constellation of remote sensing satellites for civilian use in operation today in the world, with 10 operational satellites. All these are placed in polar sun-synchronous orbit and provide data in a variety of spatial, spectral and temporal resolutions.
Data from Indian Remote Sensing satellites are used for various applications of resources survey and management under the National Natural Resources Management System (NNRMS). Following is the list of those applications:
The initial versions are composed of the 1 (A,B,C,D). The later versions are named based on their area of application including OceanSat, CartoSat, ResourceSat. Some of the satellites have alternate designations based on the launch number and vehicle (P series for PSLV).
| Serial No. | Satellite | Date of Launch | Launch Vehicle | Status |
| 1 | IRS 1A | 17 March 1988 | Vostok, USSR | Mission Completed |
| 2 | IRS 1B | 29 August 1991 | Vostok, USSR | Mission Completed |
| 3 | IRS P1 (also IE) | 20 September 1993 | PSLV-D1 | Crashed, due to launch failure of PSLV |
| 4 | IRS P2 | 15 October 1994 | PSLV-D2 | Mission Completed |
| 5 | IRS 1C | 28 December 1995 | Molniya, Russia | Mission Completed |
| 6 | IRS P3 | 21 March 1996 | PSLV-D3 | Mission Completed |
| 7 | IRS 1D | 29 September 1997 | PSLV-C1 | Mission Completed |
| 8 | IRS P4 (Oceansat-1) | 27 May 1999 | PSLV-C2 | Mission Completed |
| 9 | Technology Experiment Satellite (TES) | 22 October 2001 | PSLV-C3 | In Service |
| 10 | IRS P6 (Resourcesat-1) | 17 October 2003 | PSLV-C5 | In Service |
| 11 | IRS P5 (Cartosat 1) | 5 May 2005 | PSLV-C6 | In Service |
| 12 | Cartosat 2 (IRS P7) | 10 January 2007 | PSLV-C7 | In Service |
| 13 | Cartosat 2A (IRS P?) | 28 April 2008 | PSLV-C9 | In Service |
| 14 | IMS 1 (IRS P?) | 28 April 2008 | PSLV-C9 | In Service |
| 15 | Oceansat-2 | 23 September 2009 | PSLV-C14 | In Service |
| 16 | Cartosat-2B | 12 July 2010 | PSLV-C15 | In Service |
| 17 | Resourcesat-2 | 20 April 2011 | PSLV-C16 | In Service |
Following are the remote sensing satellites planned by ISRO to be launched next strengthening the fleet of IRS satellites and widening their applications:[2][3]
The National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) at Hyderabad is the nodal agency for reception, archival, processing and dissemination of remote sensing data in the country. NRSC acquires and processes data from all Indian remote sensing satellites like CARTOSAT-1, CARTOSAT-2, RESOURCESAT-1, IRS-1D, OCEANSAT-1 and TES as well as foreign satellites like Terra, NOAA and ERS.
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