ISRO chairman, Dr K Kasturirangan, told newsmen here that besides the Oceansat (IRS-P4) the PSLV-C2 would also carry a 50 kg Korean satellite with a scientific payload and a 110 kg German satellite.

The satellite centre of ISRO here was waiting for a payload from the Satellite Applications Centre, Ahmedabad, for final integration, he added. He said both the foreign satellites were commercial launches and for the first time PSLV would carry three satellites to be put into sunsynchronous polar orbit.

Oceansat, the first Indian satellite dedicated fully for the study of oceans would have payloads that would study the surface temperature of the ocean for Meteorological Department, a ocean colour monitor and another payload that would determine the densityof ocean mass and sediments.

Dr Kasturirangan said the date for the launch of INSAT 2E, in which eleven transponders have been leased to the Intelsat organisation, would be decided in the next few days. The satelitte would be launched by a Ariane launcher by the European Space Agency.

Earlier, inaugurating the National Symposium of the Indian Society for Remote Sensing (ISRS), he said launch and operationalisation of Oceansat, IRS-P5 (Cartosat) and IRS-P6 (Resourcesat) would see a phenomenal change in the overall application scenario.

The major thrust in the coming years would be on effective utilisation of the technology for microlevel development planning for achieving sustainable development. It would also help generate terrain information on cadastral level for easy implementation and monitoring of development plans, he added.

He said emphasis would be on to utilise the technology for strengthening efforts aimed at increasing agricultural productivity, optimum utilisation of resources withoutjeoparadising the environmental balance, harness marine resources, besides resolving scientific uncertainties associated with land, ocean and atmosphere couplings.

R Kasturirangan stressed the need for greater involvement of private entrepreneurs and non governmental organisations in remote sensing applications. At present there was minimal involvement with only about 100 entrepreneurs offering remote sensing and geographical information service bases services in the country.

He said it was gratifying to note that the IRS satellite constellation had become an international system with the US-based space imaging/Eosat marketing IRS data worldwide. Within the end of the first half of this year, ten ground stations in various parts of the world would receive IRS data. IRS had captured 12 per cent of the global remote sensing market. With technological maturity of remote sensing and also an ambience of market opening in the comercial sector participation in the developmental activities, there was challengingperspective for commercial aspect of remote sensing he added.

He said the country's vision would be to emerge as a front ranking leader in remote sensing programmes providing economic and social benefits as a government-private triad besides understanding the total earth system and the impacts of natural resources and human induced changes on the global environment.

He hoped that the symposium would come out with specific suggestions and recommendations to give a new insight which would lead remote sensing applications to its appropriate destination in the next millennium.