The 28-hour countdown for the launch of the PSLV C38 rocket carrying India's Cartost-2 Series satellite and 30 other co-passenger payloads, has begun Thursday morning at 5.29 hours. <br/><br/>In the 40th flight of the launch vehicle PSLV, the satellites would be slung into a 505-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit on Friday, after its lift off at Nine-Twenty Nine hours from Sriharikotta. <br/><br/>Out of the 30 co-passenger nano-satellites, 29 belong to foreign customers from 14 countries. The lone domestic nano-satellite is from an educational institution in Kanyakumari district.<br/><br/>The Cartosat-2 Series is a remote sensing satellite, with a mission life of five years. It is similar to five of its peers that were launched earlier, and contain panchromatic and multi-sectoral cameras. <br/><br/>Their data are useful for cartographic applications, urban and rural planning, coastal land use regulation, road network monitoring and land and geographical information system applications. <br/><br/>More from our correspondent:<br/>AIR correspondent reports, the PSLV C38/Cartosat-2 Series satellite mission is the ISRO's second launch mission this month. <br/><br/>It closely follows the recent successful maiden test flight of the GSLV Mark-III launch vehicle. <br/><br/>Hectic activities are going on in the first launch pad of the national space port at Sriharikotta, as part of the PSLV countdown process. <br/><br/>The total weight of all the 31 satellites together during lift off is 955 kilogram. The 44.4 meter long rocket's lift off mass is 320 tonne.<br/> <br/>The Cartosat-2 Series satellite along with its other peers in space is capable of providing high resolution images, making India self-sufficient in mapping applications.