The national space agency ISRO is gearing up to launch the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle PSLV C38 on Friday morning. It is set to sling India's Cartosat-2 Series satellite and 30 other nano-satellites into a 505 km sun-synchronous orbit in space. <br/><br/>The vehicle is scheduled to lift off from the first launch pad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikotta at 9.29 am carrying the payloads on board. The launch mission would be completed in over 23 minutes since lift off, with Cartosat-2 Series satellite as the first to separate from it, followed by the customer satellites one by one. Of the 30 nano-satellites, 29 belong to foreign customers from 14 countries.<br/><br/>The 28-hour countdown for the launch mission started on Thursday morning and is going on smoothly. The ISRO in its periodic update has said, the filling operation of the rocket's fourth stage with liquid propellants has been completed this evening as part of the countdown process. <br/><br/>For the PSLV, this would be the 40th flight and 17th in its extended configuration with solid strap-on motors to give it the required additional thrust.AIR correspondent reports that the principal satellite of this mission, the Cartosat-2 Series is also known as the Cartosat-2E. <br/><br/>It is the sixth in the series of India's sophisticated mapping payloads in space. The previous one was launched last February by the PSLV that set a world record by hurling a total of 104 payloads in a single mission. <br/><br/>The Cartosat-2E is a remote sensing satellite, containing panchromatic and multi-sectoral cameras with a mission life of five years. The data of all of the Cartosat-2 Series satellites are useful for urban and rural planning, coastal land use regulation, road network monitoring and geographical information system applications.