Cartosat-2 was an Indian mapping satellite whose single camera could pick out details smaller than one metre. It was launched in January 2007 and ISRO brought it down into the atmosphere in February 2024.
Re-entered Earth's atmosphere on 14 February 2024, according to the public satellite catalogue.
Cartosat-2 carried one panchromatic (black-and-white) camera with a resolution better than one metre and a strip width of about 10 km. The whole satellite could tilt along and across its path, so it could image a chosen spot instead of only the ground directly below.
ISRO says it supplied high-resolution images for urban planning until 2019.
PSLV-C7 launched it from Sriharikota on 10 January 2007. It was PSLV's tenth flight and it carried four satellites: Cartosat-2, the SRE-1 recovery capsule, Indonesia's LAPAN-TUBSAT and Argentina's PEHUENSAT-1. They went into a polar orbit about 635 km high.
This was the first PSLV to use a Dual Launch Adapter, which let two main satellites sit one above the other.
Left alone, Cartosat-2 would have taken about 30 years to fall out of orbit. ISRO instead used its leftover fuel to lower the low point of its orbit, following international space-debris guidelines.
The satellite was made electrically safe on 14 February 2024, when it was about 130 km up. ISRO's final prediction put its re-entry over the Indian Ocean at 10:18 UTC that day. ISRO's analysis said all its major parts would burn up.