Monday, June 27, 2005
India to launch two Russian satellites
Indo-Asian News Service
Bangalore, June 27, 2005
India's space agency will launch two Russian satellites during 2006-08 as part of its programme for international cooperation on a commercial basis.
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman G Madhavan Nair said on Monday his agency had a firm contract with Russia to launch the satellites to restore the Glonass navigation network.
The global navigation satellite system or Glonass is an international project involving 30 countries.
Of the 24 satellites in the constellation, 11 satellites have already been placed in geo-stationary orbit and the remainder are to be launched in coming years.
The Russian-built satellites will be launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh using an Indian rocket, the geo-synchronous satellite launch vehicle (GSLV), between 2006 and 2008.
"We have agreed to cooperate with Russia in the Glonass project, which has two objectives. The first is to launch the Russian-built spacecraft using the GSLV and to put another satellite in the polar orbit," Nair said on the sidelines of twin conferences on planetary exploration and space laws.
"We have entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Russian space agency Soyuz to jointly build an Indo-Russian spacecraft for research from a polar orbit.
"This satellite will also be launched from Sriharikota using the polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV)," he said.
ISRO is scheduled to launch the Agile satellite for Italy in the next year for multiple space applications.
The agency has also has an agreement with EADS of Austria for jointly building a communication satellite and launching it from Sriharikota on board the GSLV.
The three-day conferences on "Advances in Planetary Exploration" and "Bringing Space Benefits To The Asian Region" are being organised by the Astronautical Society of India (ASI) and International Academy of Astronauts (IAA) along with the International Institute of Space Law, ISRO and its subsidiary Antrix Corp.
© HT Media Ltd. 2005.