Since 1975, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has launched a total of 129 Indian spacecraft and 342 foreign satellites from 36 nations, of which 39 are commercial satellites and the rest are nano satellites, according to information presented to Parliament on Thursday.
“India has a total of 53 operational satellites in space providing various identified services to the nation. Total 21 of these are communication satellites, eight are navigation satellites, 21 are Earth observation satellites and three are science satellites,” Union Minister of State for Space, Dr Jitendra Singh told the Rajya Sabha in written replies to two different questions.
A total of 285 customer satellites from 29 different countries were successfully launched onboard PSLV on a commercial basis between 2016 and 2021-2022. According to him, 122 foreign satellites were launched in 2016-2017, 57 in 2017-2018, 32 in 2018-2019, 50 in 2019-2020, and 23 in 2020-2021.
Satellite-enabled data and services are being used to help a variety of sectors around the country. These include television broadcasting, Direct-to-Home, ATM, mobile communication, tele-education, telemedicine and alerts on weather, insect infestation, agro-meteorology, and possible fishing zones.
He also mentioned that satellite data is used for crop production estimation, crop intensification, agricultural drought evaluation, wasteland inventory, detecting groundwater prospect zones, inland aquaculture suitability, and disaster risk reduction.
According to the Minister, the ISRO wants to launch more satellites to improve operational applications and meet the needs of new applications and user requirements in the country. Many of the applications have been successfully adopted for operational use by stakeholder departments.
Potential fishing zone forecasting and ocean state forecasting by the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services, Ministry of Earth Sciences; crop acreage and production forecasting and national agricultural drought assessment and monitoring system by the Mahalanobis National Crop Forecast Centre, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare); biennial forest cover assessment by the Forest Survey of India, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare; biennial forest cover assessment by the Forest Survey of India, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare; biennial forest cover assessment by the Forest Survey of India, Ministry of Agriculture, the Central Water Commission’s irrigation infrastructure assessment for the Ministry of Jal Shakti, the India Meteorological Department’s weather forecasting for the Ministry of Earth Science, the Ministry of Jal Shakti’s groundwater prospect and suitable recharge locations’ mapping, and the Ministry of Rural Development’s integrated watershed management programme and MGNREGS.
The Minister also stated that the number of spacecraft launched by space centres in the country from 2016-2017 to 2021-2022 has been as follows: 2016-2017 (135), 2017-2018 (67), 2018-2019 (40), 2019-2020 (56), 2020-2021 (30), and 2021-2022 (to date) 1. Year by year, the country has launched 13, 10, 8, 6, 7, and 1 spacecraft for domestic use, accordingly.
According to the Minister, the following countries had the most foreign satellites launched between 2016-17 and 2021-22: Algeria (3), Australia (1), Austria (1), Belgium (3), Brazil (1), Canada (5), Chile (1), Colombia (1), Czech Republic (1), Finland (3), France (2), Germany (2), Indonesia (1), Israel (2), Italy (4), Japan (2), Kazakhstan (1), Latvia (1), Lithuania (7), Luxembourg (1), Malaysia (1), The Netherlands (2), Republic Of Korea (5), Slovakia (1), Spain (2), Switzerland (2), Slovakia (222).
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