EOS-05's launch was notable for a series of "world-first" claims specific to its spectral-imaging design. According to ISRO, GISAT-1A became the world's first-ever geostationary satellite to carry hyperspectral imagers, capable of capturing hundreds of narrow spectral bands rather than the handful of broad bands typical multispectral cameras use, and its 42-metre-resolution multispectral imager is described as the highest-resolution camera ever placed in geostationary orbit.

EOS-05 operates from geostationary orbit at an altitude of approximately 36,000 kilometres above the Earth, the same class of orbit used by communication and weather satellites, since a satellite parked there orbits the Earth at exactly the same rate the Earth itself rotates, allowing it to remain fixed over the same patch of the Indian subcontinent at all times. This fixed vantage point is precisely what makes rapid, repeated imaging of a single region, useful for disaster response, possible in a way that a satellite orbiting much closer to Earth in a polar, sun-synchronous path cannot easily match.

EOS-05, or GISAT-1A, is the second satellite in ISRO's GISAT series of geostationary imaging satellites, following the loss of the first, GISAT-1, also called EOS-03, in a 2021 launch failure.