CartoSat 2D is the fifth in India’s second generation of CartoSat Earth Observation craft tasked with the generation of high-resolution imagery, employing a high-degree of agility on the satellites to support event monitoring with high revisit times.

The CartoSat-2D launch follows up on the CartoSat-2C mission that launched in June 2016 and is a nearly identical copy of the 2C satellite, carrying the same instruments and operating from a similar orbit. Previous CartoSat missions used a Sun Synchronous Orbit 640 Kilometers in altitude while the newer ones fly at 505 Kilometers in order to increase the resolution of the panchromatic and multispectral cameras aboard the satellites.