The Hindu : National : ISRO to launch four satellites this year

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 27, 2005

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ISRO to launch four satellites this year

By Our Staff Reporter

BANGALORE, FEB. 26. India will launch four satellites, including two remote sensing satellites from Sriharikota this year.

Speaking to presspersons, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), G. Madhavan Nair, said the Cartosat-1 remote sensing satellite, with a 2.5 metre spatial resolution camera, would be launched by April. It would be launched on the indigenous Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rocket.

"The satellite has been integrated and it will shortly go in for thermal tests. The launch vehicle is also under progress," Mr. Nair said.

DTH telecast

The INSAT-4A would probably be launched in May. The 3,000 kg INSAT-4A will have 12 Ku band transponders for direct-to-home satellite TV applications and 12C band communication transponders.

Two other satellites — including Cartosat-2 remote sensing satellite, an advanced satellite with a single panchromatic camera capable of providing scene-specific imageries for cartographic applications, and INSAT-4C communication satellite with 18-ku band transponders dedicated to DTH applications — will be launched some time later this year, he said. He also said that for the first time, India would also launch a 350 kg Italian scientific satellite "Agile,' as a lone foreign satellite on its PSLV rocket early next year.

"A German company, which bagged the launch contract has sub-contracted it to ISRO," the executive director, Antrix Corporation, K.R. Sridhara Murthi, said. Antrix is the commercial arm of ISRO and markets India's satellite and launch capabilities to global customers.

"We are able to give a competitive price," said Mr. Nair. He also said that ISRO may use spare capacity in the rocket to launch an Indian satellite, but had drawn up no plans as such.

He said the U.S. space agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), is in talks with ISRO to place its scientific instruments on India's spacecraft, which will undertake an unmanned mission to the moon in 2007.

"NASA is interested in placing its payload in our moon mission. We have also received offers from two other European countries," P.S. Goel, director of the ISRO Satellite Centre, said. India plans to put a 525 kg orbiter using PSLV rocket to study the moon. ISRO had allotted 10 kg and 10 watt of power for space agencies of other nations and had invited international bids. This evoked 15 responses from 10 nations including the U.S., the U.K., Germany, Bulgaria, and Sweden, he said.

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