Industry ready to participate in space programmes: ISRO

India has great potential to capture a sizeable portion of business in international space market, says ISRO chairman

More than 100 companies in the aerospace business have expressed their readiness to partner with the Indian space agency to support its venture into global space market, in an event organised by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The event was conducted to fill the gap in end-to-end realisation of spacecraft building in the country with the participation of industries.

In the "Make in India" Conference on Enabling Spacecraft Systems Realisation through Industries (ESSRI - 2016), organised in ISRO Satellite Centre, Bengaluru, ISRO Chairman A S Kiran Kumar said that all the Government departments and ministries had evinced keen interest in applying space technology for carrying out their mandates and in order to meet the increased demand for space based services, it was imperative that ISRO joined hands with the Industries in its effort towards enhancing its capacity.

He added that India has great potential to capture a sizeable portion of the business in the international space market, according to a statement from the space organisation.

M Annadurai, director, ISAC spoke about the need for launching at least 10-12 satellites every year. It may be noted that as reported earlier, Isro has floated Expression of Interest (EoI) for realising spacecraft on an end-to-end basis has been hosted on ISRO/ISAC websites and invited the industries to respond to it.

About 110 Industries in aerospace business participated in the Conference and presented their capabilities and expressed their commitment to partner with ISRO for the realisation of satellites on end-to-end basis, it said.

Over the years, a number of Indian Industries have been actively participating in realising various subsystems of spacecraft. A variety of models have been adopted by ISRO in outsourcing jobs to these vendors. However, end-to-end realisation of spacecraft has not yet been realised. The Conference aimed to fill this gap.