India poised to be major
player in global satellite manufacturing
By
Venkatachari Jagannathan
Indo-Asian
News Service
Chennai,
Oct 29 (IANS) India can become a major player in the emerging
small satellite manufacturing industry. The country's space
agency has estimated a market potential of 50 satellites over
the next decade, worth around $1.5 billion, says a space official.
Keeping
this in mind, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)
has already formed a special team to manufacture small satellites.
ISRO
will launch two such satellites in 2009 and 2010, both having
overseas payloads.
The
small satellites are now in demand because its "mass
and volume are low, thereby reducing the cost of carriage
by rocket. Further, the cost of building the satellite as
well as the time required to build it are less," D.V.
Raghava Murthy, ISRO's small satellite projects director,
told IANS.
"The
satellites give a good performance owing to miniaturisation,
and simultaneous launch of several satellites is possible
if the orbit is same," he added.
ISRO
has two small satellite variants - micro and mini.
The
micro satellites weigh 100 kg with a payload capacity of 30-40
kg while the mini satellites would weigh 400 kg with a payload
capacity of 200 kg.
ISRO
is also making communication satellites - INSAT series. Its
INSAT-4 series satellites weigh around four tonnes and cost
about Rs.3 billion.
In
April this year, ISRO shot its first mini satellite - Indian
Mini Satellite (IMS-1) - weighing 85 kg on board the Polar
Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C9).
"The
cost of IMS-1 was around Rs.500 million. The value of each
satellite would vary depending on its payload - the instruments
it would carry," Murthy said.
"The
mini satellite has two high performance payloads - multi-spectral
camera and hyper-spectral camera. Injected into polar sun-synchronous
orbit, the satellite is providing good data," said the
52-year-old Murthy, who was the project director for Cartosat
I and IMS-1 satellites.
The
mini satellite too has advanced features.
"The
miniaturisation technologies, developed for small satellites,
can be transplanted to bigger ones, thereby reducing their
weight," he added.
ISRO
will launch its second micro satellite YOUTHSAT next year,
carrying two Indian payloads and one from Moscow University,
Russia.
"We
will also launch SARAL, a mini satellite with French payload
some time in 2010," Murthy said.
Speaking
of the application potential of small satellites, he added:
"It is mind-boggling. They can be used in remote sensing,
atmospheric monitoring, gas detection, pollution monitoring,
ionospheric tomography, ocean monitoring and studies, low
earth orbit communications, stellar monitoring, space physics
experimentation, data collection and others."
The
small satellites will initially be flown as "co-passengers"
in the Indian rockets PSLV and Geosynchronous Satellite Launch
Vehicle (GSLV).
According
to Murthy, many space agencies are now involved in making
small satellites.
ISRO
will be crossing swords with the Britain-based Surrey Satellite
Technology Ltd, OHB Germany, Canada's MDA and Comdev, Israel
Aerospace Industries, Orbital Sciences in the US, Thales Alenia
in Europe among others.
The
Indian space agency, having the necessary expertise in making
big communication satellites, hopes that it can supply satellites
to overseas players.
"We
are targeting a revenue of around $60 million from manufacturing
satellites for others," K.R. Sridhara Murthi, executive
director of Antrix Corp Ltd, the commercial arm of the Indian
space agency, told IANS.
ISRO
has built and delivered a 32 transponder satellite, W2M, weighing
3,200 kg for the Paris-based Eutelsat Communications.
The
order is from Europe's leading satellite system specialist
EADS Astrium.
The
transponders supplied by a European manufacturer were assembled
at ISRO's satellite centre in Bangalore.
ISRO
has won another contract from Avanti Screen Media, again through
EADS Astrium, to make a highly adoptable satellite.
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