India's first experimental remote sensing satellite, launched by a Soviet rocket in 1979 to test TV cameras and a microwave radiometer for studying land and sea.
Re-entered Earth's atmosphere on 17 February 1989, according to the public satellite catalogue.
Bhaskara-1 was the first experimental remote sensing satellite built in India. Its TV cameras photographed the ground, and those pictures were used in hydrology and forestry.
A microwave radiometer called SAMIR measured the sea surface. Its data was used for ocean studies.
The satellite was named after the two Bhaskaracharyas, astronomer-mathematicians of ancient India.
Bhaskara-1 weighed 442 kg and had 47 watts of power. It was a 26-faced, almost round body about 1.66 m tall and 1.55 m across. It was spin-stabilised, with the direction of its spin axis controlled, and it talked to the ground on VHF radio.
A Soviet rocket, listed by ISRO as C-1 Intercosmos, launched Bhaskara-1 from Kapustin Yar on 7 June 1979. ISRO names the site the Volgograd launch station. The orbit was about 519 × 541 km, tilted 50.6° to the equator.
The satellite was planned to work for one year. It stayed in orbit for about ten years and re-entered the atmosphere in 1989.