India is all set to break its own record of launching 20 satellites aboard the PSLV C34, from its Satish Dhawan Space Center in Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota on Wednesday.

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Of different shapes and sizes, ISRO’s 20 satellites comprise of CubeSats which are less than one Kilogram to more massive Earth Observation Satellites.

The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle C-34 (PSLV) will carry India’s latest earth observation Cartosat-2 Series satellite along with 19 co-passenger satellites including those made by Indian students and belonging to foreign vendors like the US, Germany, Canada and Indonesia.

The foremost 727-Kilogram CartoSat-2C, is part of India’s second generation of Earth Observation Spacecraft dedicated to environmental monitoring and cartography.

CartoSat-2C will be riding as the primary payload and will be first to separate from the rocket after sixteen and a half minutes of powered flight into a 505-Kilometer orbit, inclined 97.5 degrees, Space Flight News stated in a report.

This satellite will deliver high-resolution black-and-white images of the planet at a ground resolution of 65 centimeters while colour imagery will be available at a two-meter resolution.

The other satellites launched by ISRO include:

1. BIROS - The fire detection mission satellites operated by the German Aerospace center.

2. GHGSat-D - The Greenhouse Gas Satellite, developed at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies Space Flight Laboratory. 

3. M3M Sat, the Maritime Monitoring and Messaging Microsatellite, is a Canadian Space technology satellite. 

4. SkySat C1 - the first of 19 operational Earth Observation Satellites, developed by a Californian based company.

5. LAPAN-A3 is a microsatellite, whose purpose is threefold including high-resolution imagery for Earth Observation Purposes, a voice repeater in disaster mitigation and collect Automatic Identification System data for maritime monitoring. It also includesa technical demonstrator testing and was developed in a partnership between Indonesia and Technical University of Berlin.

6. Planet Labs Doves is a cluster of 12 satellites operated by Planet Labs in San Francisco to obtain high-resolution images of Earth.

7. SathyabamaSat (SB Sat) is a 2-Unit CubeSat whose sole mission is to study atmospheric species bult by Sathyabama University, India. 

8. Swayam is a 1-Unit CubeSat to develop a space-based bi-directional communications platforms built by College of Engineering, Pune (COEP).