Chennai, July 23: The Indian space agency will be using its Radar Imaging Satellite (RISAT) that can see through the clouds to locate the missing Indian Air Force (IAF) plane that went missing Friday morning with 29 people on board, said its chief Saturday.
“We will be using RISAT to locate the missing aircraft. The satellite can take pictures both during the day and night. It can see through the clouds,” Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman A.S. Kiran Kumar said.
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He said ISRO’s satellites could be tilted to some extent to look at a different place in times of need. The RISAT’s active microwave remote sensing provides cloud penetration and day-night imaging capability.
These unique characteristics of C-band (5.35GHz) Synthetic Aperture Radar enable applications in agriculture, particularly paddy monitoring in kharif season and management of natural disasters like flood and cyclone, ISRO had said earlier about RISAT.
According to Kiran Kumar, ISRO is in the process of looking into the data of satellites that can throw some light on the missing plane. He said the search and rescue beacon signal from the IAF plane was not picked by the ISRO satellites as the signals were not there.
“Aircrafts with search and rescue beacons should also have a transmitter to transmit the signals for the satellites to pick up,” he said. The IAF AN-32 aircraft went missing on Friday over the Bay of Bengal off the Chennai coast.
The search and rescue operation by Indian Navy and Coast Guard, which went on through the night, continued Saturday and more assets were deployed. Two P8I surveillance aircrafts and two Dornier are continuing the search while one Dornier is on standby at Port Blair.
INSET: Kin of two Kerala officials pray for good news
Kozhikode (Kerala): As search for the missing AN-32 IAF aircraft with 29 people on board is on, the family and friends of two Kerala defence officials who were on the plane are praying fervently and hoping to hear some good news. The last that the anxious relatives heard from Naik I.P.Vimal and Petty Officer Sajeev Kumar, who hail from Kozhikode, was that they are about to board the aircraft bound for Port Blair. The aircraft disappeared over the Bay of Bengal Friday morning after taking off from Chennai. Several ships and aircraft are searching for the plane in the Bay of Bengal. Kumar was here last month for a brief treatment. Friday, he reached Tambaram airfield from Bangalore to return to Port Blair where he lives with his wife and kid. “We are all waiting to hear some good news. We had spend some time together when he was here last,” a friend of Kumar told the media. He added that Kumar’s wife had called up from Port Blair to inform them soon after the flight went missing. Vimal, according to relatives, was posted at Port Blair very recently. He was here last week.
