ISRO to launch 8 foreign satellites; also eyes acquisitions

Ramnath Shenoy
Bangalore, Nov 30 (PTI) India's space agency has in
its pipeline eight foreign satellites for launch and is
scouting to acquire such spacecraft from abroad to expand
capacity in the field of communication transponder back home.
"Today, we have eight (foreign) satellites to be
launched. This will be launched over the next two-three
years", Managing Director of Antrix Corporation, marketing arm
of Bangalore headquartered Indian Space Research Organisation
(ISRO), K R Sridhara Murthi, told PTI.
These are a mix of small and bigger satellites, he
said but declined to elaborate, noting that the space agency
is yet to formally ink some of these contracts.
But one foreign satellite that is being readied for
launch is a 150-kg one from Algeria, which is slated to be
launched by home-grown Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle as a
piggyback payload likely in April next year.
Sridhara Murthi said ISRO is looking for opportunities
to acquire foreign satellites.
In fact, it, along with its global partners, recently
unsuccessfully bid to acquire a satellite, which was put up
for auctioning by a company facing bankruptcy, in the
United States.
Intelsat won the bid with a price of USD 210
million.ISRO was ready to shell out USD 100 million for part
of the capacity that it intended to use, Sridhara Murthi said.
ISRO's bold move is a sign of its growing confidence,
he said.
ISRO has also started integrating Hylas spacecraft, a
contract it jointly bagged with EADS-Astrium, and it would be
delivered to the customer, UK-based Avanti Screenmedia, in
June.
Under the contract, EADS-Astrium is the prime
contractor in charge of overall programme management and would
build the communications payload, while Antrix/ISRO would
build the satellite with a lift-off mass of around 2.5 tonnes
and power of 3.2 KW.
"This year we are producing a very sophisticated high
definition television satellite (Hylas) -- probably for
the first time in the world", he said.
ISRO is looking to further scale up the participation
of industries in space projects and even mulling to outsource
some research and development tasks to them.
"Nearly 400 industries take part in space programme
today", he said, noting for example that industries now
undertake 70 per cent of work on developing launch vehicles
(rockets).
"So, when (Indian) rocket is a success, it's not
merely ISRO which has to take credit, it is also a large
number of industries which have to take credit", Sridhara
Murthi said.
In addition, as of March this year, ISRO had
transferred 289 technologies to modern industries for
commercialisation and provided 270 technical consultancies in
different disciplines of space technology.
ISRO endeavours to develop technologies with
industries. "In the years to come, even for R & D tasks, ISRO
will depend more and more on industries".
Sridhara Murthi also spoke about the profitability of
space business. Antix today has an annual revenue of over Rs
1,000 crore.
"Each satellite can pay for itself including the cost
of launching. If you take a communication satellite, probably
we spend about Rs 300 crore to launch one satellite. But,
typically, this can pay back Rs 800 crore to Rs 1,000 crore
over a period of its life".
"If we look at the value chain of space activities, if
we invest one rupee in space, there is ten rupee business on
ground", he said. PTI RS
SKT