For the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), this has been a remarkable year. It took two launches to make it so. The first launch, in February, set the startling record of the 104 satellites injected into orbit by a single launch and a tremendous leap from the previous Russian record of 37 satellite.
The second lauch in June, was the first successful launch of India’s heaviest, most powerful rocket, Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV Mark III), developed entirely at home, through more than 15 years of patient work.
It announces the ambitions of Isro’s commercial arm, Antrix Corp. Ltd of becoming a serious contender in the 5.5 billion global space industry, the Rakesh Sasibhushan, Antrix’s chairman and managing director said “In the next five years, the growth in space will be mind-boggling,” “It will change the way we do things and the kind of technology we will be able to put in space.” “The 104 launch by the PSLV has been a big boost for us as far as marketing is concerned,” “In business terms, we are looking at a major milestone in the next one year.” “Currently, we have on hand orders of around Rs 600 crore, for PSLV launches up to 2020,” “We are expecting many more orders to come in.” “the launch market using the PSLV is still not large. It brings in only 20% of our revenue”.
ISRO’s PSLV have a brighter future because Most of the world’s Internet works through terrestrial cable connections. One of the major reasons why communication satellites that are in geosynchronous orbits at around 35,000km from earth, are not used for Internet because of time lag that is introduced when signals have to travel back and forth from the satellites. It takes a radio wave at least 230 milliseconds to get to geosynchronous orbit and back; a signal through a fibre optic cable can travel between New Delhi and London around eight times in 230 milliseconds.
But the terrestrial network has its own limitations; despite the galloping demand for connectivity, Internet users across the world are still clustered mainly in urban areas, because those are the areas the cables reach. Forget India or African countries, even some part of U S do not have access to fast broadband connections. So the satellite in low earth orbit has very less lag time than satellite in geosynchronous orbits. Isro and Antrix are uniquely positioned to take advantage of this because the nature of the project involves placing thousands of small satellites in a so-called Low Earth Orbit, or LEO, the very thing that Isro’s most successful rocket PSLV does so well.