New Delhi – India placed an Israeli-built spy satellite into orbit Monday to enhance its defence capabilities and help security agencies monitor its borders in the aftermath of the November Mumbai terrorist attacks, news reports and officials said.

The locally built PSLV-C12 rocket carrying the 300-kilogramme radar-imaging satellite and a 40-kilogramme education satellite, lifted off from the Satish Dhawan spaceport in Sriharikota city, 90 kilometres north of southern Chennai city early Monday morning.

After 19 minutes of flight, the satellites were placed into in orbit 550 kilometres above the earth in a flawless launch, Indian Space Research Organization spokesman S Satish said by telephone.

The main satellite has all-weather capability to take images of the earth and will also help map and manage natural disasters such as floods, besides boosting defence surveillance, he said.

Unlike existing Indian satellites, it has the capability to monitor the country’s borders continuously and can track minute movements on land, sources told the PTI news agency.

The presence of a synthetic aperture radar built by Israel Aerospace Industries also gives it defence capabilities, the IANS news agency reported.

Local media reported that Indian authorities rushed the project after the Mumbai terror attacks in November.

At least 166 people were killed in attacks carried out by militants from the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba who reached the city on boats from the port city of Karachi.

The space agency said the education satellite built by Anna University will perform drought and wasteland monitoring, urban planning and other studies.

“ANUSAT is the first experimental communications satellite to be built by an Indian university, which stores and forwards data. It is expected to encourage Indian universities to build satellites,” Satish said. (dpa)