India's space agency launched 31 satellites including its main earth observation satellite and 29 foreign payloads in a single mission on Friday, dpa reported. An Indian Space Research Organization rocket launched from the Sriharikota spaceport in southern India at 9:05 am (0335 GMT) and placed the satellites into their prescribed orbit some 23 minutes later. The main payload, the Cartosat-2, a high-resolution cartography satellite, weighs 712 kilogrammes and has a design life of five years, an ISRO official said. The co-passenger satellites comprise 29 nano-satellites from 14 countries including Austria, Belgium, Chile, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Britain and US as well as a nano-satellite from India, the ISRO said in a statement. The 30 smaller satellites weigh about 243 kilogrammes.
