28 commercial launches waiting in wings: Antrix
After the succesful launch of PSLV-C28 a swarm of activity can be expected in near future
By : DC Correspondent
Update: 2015-07-12 06:38 GMT
Chennai: Antrix, the commercial arm of the ISRO, has revealed on Friday night that it has 28 international customers waiting in wings for commercial launches on board PSLV. Speaking at the post-launch conference of PSLV-C28, Mr V.S. Hegde, chairman cum managing director of Antrix, said a swarm of activity can be expected in near future. “We have 28 commercial launches line-up for next 3 years. The customers span over 6-7 countries. Including Friday successful launch of 5 UK satellites, ISRO has launches a total of 45 satellites belonging to 19 countries”.
ISRO chairman Mr Kiran Kumar said it is critical for the space agency to increase the frequency of the flights and enhance the capacity building. “As of now, we are launching 4-5 vehicles as against the maximum capacity of 10 vehicles. Our first priority is to meet the national requirements.” With regard to man missions, ISRO chief said a formal approval has to be given by the government. Meantime, ISRO will continue with developing and testing critical technologies.
“To train the astronauts, we can use the services of the other space agencies. However, as of now, nothing much is happening”.To a query, Mr Kiran Kumar said the Chandrayaan-2 mission is going through realisation phase. The work is going on with regard to an orbiter and lander.
He also revealed that discussions are going with regard to launch another Mangalyaan mission and send a spacecraft to Venus and study asteroids. By next March, ISRO plans to launch three navigation satellites, which are in addition to 4 navigation satellites already put into orbit.