MUMBAI - India's 12-storey high Polar
Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C9) flung out 10
satellites one by one 630 kilometers above the
Earth after take-off on the morning of April 28,
and with that flowering of metal consolidated
India's commercial space business in a club
dominated by the United States, Europe and Russia.
The 12th successive successful flight of
the 15-year old PSLV series was "a perfect,
flawless launch operation", the balding Madhavan
Nair, chairman of the Indian Space Research
Organization, said on live national television, as
his white-jacketed colleagues beamed joyfully at
cracking an Asian record.
Monday's launch
marked several firsts for the Indian
Space
Research Organization (ISRO),
according to agency reports. It was the first time
an ISRO rocket carried 10 satellites at a time,
the first time a mini satellite was designed and
sent up and the first time the Indian space agency
utilized the optimum capacity of the PSLV’s core
alone configuration, that is without booster
rockets, the reports said.
Indian news
reports that the flight broke the previous record
of eight satellites launched at one go by a
Russian rocket, appear off target, however.
A Russian Dnepr carrier rocket plonked 16
microsatellites in orbit in April 2007, according
to Roskosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency in
a Russian embassy press release that month.
Another report says the 16-microsatellite Russian
launch had a combined payload of 300 kg. India's
PSLV-C9 had an 823-kg payload and can be geared to
haul up to 1,200 kgs.
India's CARTOSAT-2A
was the primary passenger aboard the PSLV-C9, a
690-kg satellite with the latest imaging equipment
that enables tracking of objects less than one
meter across back on Earth.
The payload
also include a 83-kg Indian Mini Satellite-1, was
put into orbit to test new technologies involved
in future space projects, and eight
micro-satellites with a total weight of about 50
kg for clients from Canada, Denmark, Germany and
Netherlands.
Helping to attract customers
is the success rate of India's satellite launch
program allied to competitive fees. "Our satellite
launch fees range from US$20,000 per kg to $36,000
per kg," said Sridhara Murthy, managing director
of the Bangalore-based Antrix Corporation Limited,
the marketing agency of the Department of Space
(DOS) that oversees India's space activities.
The fees are reported to be between 30% to
60% less than those of the competition, though
Murthy did not wish to confirm the figure. India's
current share of the more than $106 billion global
satellite market is a non-audited estimate of $224
million. ISRO earnings come largely from
transponder leasing (48%), satellite launches and
allied services (18%) and selling remote sensing
data (8%), with the balance from custom-building
satellites.
India is cashing in on growing
global demand for satellites. US-based industry
researcher Futron Corporation says world satellite
industry revenues averaged 10.5% growth from 2001
to 2006 with services growing 19% from 2005 to
2006 courtesy of demand for global satellite
television.
"The satellite industry finds
itself in the midst of a robust period of business
activity," Futron says in its analysis of 2007
business, with greater consumer demand for
high-definition TV (HDTV) and broadband Internet
access through satellite.
India and China
are joining Europe and "a resurgent Russia" in
challenging the dominance in "all three major
dimensions of space competitiveness - government,
human capital and industry" historically enjoyed
by the United States, according to Futron. Other
nations listed in Futron's Space Competitiveness
Index (SCI) 2008 analyzing space and related
activity are Brazil, Canada, Israel, Japan and
South Korea.
Even so, India and China have
much to do to catch the market leaders. "China and
India are orders of magnitude behind the US and
Europe, and trail Russia as well," says Andrea
Maletor, a senior Futron analyst with over 25
years experience in the global satellite and
telecommunications industry. "Major factors here
include immature and non-transparent government
policy and organizational structures, lower
overall investment, lack of commercial operations,
[and] not being part of the International Space
Station."
India's 10-packer satellite
launch pointed to the growing threat of space
debris from sick and dead satellites as the
business booms.
Futron's database "shows
approximately 1,180 active satellites of all types
in Earth orbit," says Andrea of Futron. "The past
two years have had strong orders, meaning
2008-2010 should have many launches."
Abandoned satellites, as one piece or
crumbling into debris, number about 10,000 objects
in the higher orbits of around 800 km, estimates
Sridhara Murthy of Antrix.
"Approximately
17,000 objects larger than 10 cm are known to
exist," according to the NASA Orbital Debris
Programme Office, besides about 200,000 particles
between one and 10 cm diameter and "tens of
millions" of debris lesser than one cm.
The space debris hurtles at speeds of
around 25,000 km/hour. "At such speeds, colliding
debris weighing even a fraction of a kilogram can
damage a satellite," says Murthy. "The debris
problem is no cause for alarm as yet but cannot be
ignored."
The Inter-Agency Space Debris
Coordination Committee (IADC), formed in 1993
seems to recognize the problem but is yet to be
fully awake to it.
The IADC members
(national space agencies of Italy, Britain,
France, China, Germany, the European Space Agency,
India, USA, Japan, Ukraine and Russia) developed
guidelines for protecting space from debris,
guidelines later endorsed in 2007 by the UN
Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.
But the IADC seems itself to have gone
into its own orbit and lost touch with base, as
its last technical report on space debris is dated
1999, and its compiled list of reported space
debris is rather idiosyncratic. The only entry in
the list of "objects discovered in 2004" was
Argentina notifying that a cylindrical, metallic
space object 40-kg in weight, 1.6 meter long and
1.4 meter wide had popped out of a Delta-2
launcher in 1993. A few disasters may be necessary
before disaster management gains priority.
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