CLASSIFIED

PRSC-S1

SAR Earth Observation / Regional Surveillance · SUPARCO (Pakistan), with CETC and MICROSAT China

Clouds, smoke and darkness don't stop PRSC-S1 — and that was the point. Launched July 31, 2025 from China's Xichang Satellite Launch Center, it is Pakistan's first synthetic aperture radar satellite. Instead of photographing sunlight reflected off the ground, it fires its own microwave pulses downward and builds a picture from the echoes, so it sees through monsoon cloud and works just as well at night. Developed by SUPARCO with China Electronics Technology Group (CETC) and MICROSAT China, it gives Pakistan what SUPARCO calls round-the-clock observation for managing natural resources and disasters. Its orbit tells a more pointed story. Nearly every Earth observation satellite flies a sun-synchronous orbit tilted about 97 degrees, covering the whole planet at the same local time each day. PRSC-S1 flies tilted at just 41 degrees, about 340 miles up — never passing over the poles, and instead returning again and again over the band that holds Pakistan, northern India and Kashmir. It reached orbit less than three months after the May 2025 conflict between India and Pakistan, a crisis analysts say exposed how hard it was for Pakistan to get fresh imagery of the region quickly.