The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) announced that its PSLV-C42 rocket successfully launched two foreign satellites from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on Sept. 16, 2018. This mission was designed to launch two Earth-observation satellites, NovaSAR and S1-4 (together weighing nearly 889 kilograms). Both satellites were injected into 583-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit.

NovaSAR is an S-band synthetic aperture radar satellite intended for forest mapping; land use and ice-cover monitoring; and flood and disaster monitoring. S1-4 is a high-resolution optical Earth-observation satellite used for surveying resources, environmental monitoring, urban management and disaster monitoring.