India has been performing space activities for over 50 years now. Led by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), we have acquired the ability to build satellites, launch vehicles, ground control to serve the people of India with space-based services. Space is acting as an enabler today to provide several services such Direct-To-Home (DTH) broadcasting, VSAT for bank ATM machines, weather services, disaster management (search and rescue), navigation services, imagery based Geographical Information Systems (GIS) products among others.

In 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed a national meet of top officials of different Ministries and State Governments on use of space applications in daily governance that included 1500 delegates mainly being Secretaries of Central Ministries/ Departments.… Click here to read the complete article

Is taking the giant leap into space still a muscle-flexing exercise for competing powers or has it become the blueprint for international co-operation? Andrew Mueller talks to Susmita Mohanty about developments in India.

NewSpace is a movement of firebrand entrepreneurs starting companies around the world targeting commercial opportunities for innovative space products/services. They are being backed mainly by private risk capital (mostly venture firms) with an expectation that the innovation pursued by these entrepreneurs will integrate into the economy here on the Earth, creating value towards a meaningful exit.

NewSpace – Changing the ecosystem slowly, but surely!

Today, NewSpace companies are springing up almost on a weekly basis and there is a strong reason to believe that today there are over 1000 NewSpace companies around the world. They are embedding themselves across the value chain from upstream to downstream, with each of them trying to bring a new layer of innovation by different methods (e.g.… Click here to read the complete article

Prelude

Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) evolved from late 1960’s with two collaborative institutions. The Space Application Center (SAC) in Ahmedabad collaborated with NASA and Bengaluru ISRO collaborated with Russian space agency. Both were separated and no communications existed in the beginning due to cold war issues. I had more knowledge of SAC since I joined SAC in 1971.
This article only provides more on SAC and its impact on Indian Space Program with the success stories of the beginning.

In the Beginning

Early hires in SAC came with military background and some of them also worked in RCA Earth Station in Pune.… Click here to read the complete article

June 5, 2017 will go down as a historic date for the Indian space programme with the success of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launching the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mk-III (GSLV Mk-III) in its full-fledged maiden flight. In this success, ISRO also breaks free of the first-time launch jinxes for India which the Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV), Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mk II (GSLV Mk II) faced during their first flights.

Although ISRO had tested the GSLV Mk III’s solid motor on a previous mission, June 5 was the first time the launch vehicle was being flown with an upgraded cryogenic engine.… Click here to read the complete article

GSAT-17, launched on an Ariane 5 rocket today, is the 31^st communication satellite to roll off ISRO’s production lines.

The very first one was APPLE, the ‘Ariane Passenger Payload Experiment’, which the European Space Agency launched for free on their fledgling Ariane 1 rocket 36 years ago. This experimental spacecraft was, as an ISRO brochure noted at the time, “conceived as a stepping stone towards future operational national communication satellites which can provide communication, direct TV broadcast and meteorological services from a geostationary orbit.”

The first such operational communication satellite designed and built by ISRO, INSAT-2A, went into space, again on an Ariane rocket, in July 1992.… Click here to read the complete article

Students for Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) is a worldwide student-run chapter that aims to impart knowledge about space and astronomy. SEDS educates people about the benefits of space by providing opportunities. SEDS India is the governing body of all SEDS student chapters across the country.

SEDS – India, founded in 2004, is a parent organisation which currently constitutes 8 chapters in various colleges around India. The headquarters of SEDS India resides at VIT University. SEDS-VIT has contributed immensely to the development of space technology with projects such as NASA’s CanSat, ERC’16 and SpaceX Hyperloop.

The global rise of space start-ups in recent years has triggered a mass shift of young scientists and researchers towards the field of aerospace and space science.… Click here to read the complete article

To a space enthusiast, going to watch a rocket launch feels quite like making a pilgrimage. The experiences have interesting similarities. You prepare for your journey with a deep sense of expectation, you plan your travel so that you arrive at the perfect moment, so that you don’t miss out on that moment of truth. Finally, the reward for your journey is that magnificent view, and the emotions stirred within at that awe-inspiring moment. For a space-geek, June 5 was one of those days, when India made history.

I’m also a big fan of spreading the word on how space can be useful to the common man, and the launch made for an opportunity to take some friends who didn’t work in the space sector along and show them how things worked in Sriharikota.… Click here to read the complete article

Over 12,000 suicides were reported in the agricultural sector of India every year since 2013. One of the fundamental reasons for such manifestation of unfortunate incidents of suicides in the farm sector in India is a large number of farmers living below the poverty line. The question remains how do you address this problem in short term while you try to double-quadruple the income of farmers over a period of time.

The crop insurance claims in India are likely to touch Rs 13,000 crore (~$2b) in the 2016-17 crop year ending next month, in spite of good monsoon, indicating other risks weighing heavy on the farm sector.… Click here to read the complete article

Diplomatist has covered two major stories on the Indian space programme as a part of its April 2017 edition.

Prof. Chandrashekar from National Institute of Advanced Studies has written on the launch sector with the evolution of PSLV and GSLV taking centre stage as ISRO’s capabilities in the launch sector has matured.

“As the global space power games evolve, they will have a cascading effect on the threats and opportunities that the Indian programme will encounter. While opportunities can be exploited suitably, the obvious lessons that can be learned from the PSLV and GSLV experiences is that key areas of development have to be shielded from the vagaries of global power politics.… Click here to read the complete article