New Delhi: In an effort to maintain watch over India, Pakistan has launched six Earth-observation satellites between January 2025 and June 2026.
Most of the newly launched satellites are positioned in orbits that allow frequent imaging of Indian territory, particularly northern India and the Jammu and Kashmir region, raising questions about their potential strategic and security implications, as reported by ThePrint.
Pakistan seems to have increased the pace of launches after Operation Sindoor, realising the importance of constant surveillance across its eastern border. This enhancement of space-based surveillance capabilities have come with support from China, which provided development and launch services.
China is known to have provided much needed surveillance data to Pakistan during the four-day conflict.
The news report has analysed the satellites PAUSAT-1, PRSC-EO1, PRSS-2, HS-1, PRSC-EO2 and PRSC-EO3. While Pakistan has described these missions as civilian projects aimed at agriculture, disaster manag
ement and resource monitoring, experts emphasise that modern Earth-observation satellites often have dual-use capabilities that can also support military surveillance, as reported by News18.
The satellites are equipped with technologies such as high-resolution optical imaging, hyperspectral sensors and artificial intelligence-assisted image processing. These systems can be used to monitor infrastructure changes, military installations, troop movements and maritime activity, ThePrint has reported.
Unlike conventional Earth-observation satellites that operate in Sun-synchronous orbits, PRSC-EO3, launched in April 2026, was reportedly placed in an orbit designed to increase revisit rates over South Asia, especially northern India and Kashmir, the report claims.
What is remarkable is that since the establishment of its space agency SUPARCO in 1961, Pakistan has launched 15 satellites. Six of those missions took place in the last 16 months alone.
There has been extensive cooperation between Pakistan and China, the report says, noting that most of the recent satellites were either launched aboard Chinese rockets or developed through joint programmes. The accelerated pace of deployment would have been difficult without substantial external support, security analysts say.
This comes at a time when India has faced setbacks in several strategic satellite missions over the past two years. These include the EOS-N1, EOS-09 and NavIC NVS-02 missions.
With space-based surveillance becoming a critical component of modern warfare and national security, experts say that India need to strengthen its own satellite capabilities to maintain strategic awareness.