India, which placed an Italian satellite into orbit last month, plans to launch three more foreign satellites, a government minister said Thursday. "The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has already signed agreements for putting into space three more foreign satellites," Prithviraj Chavan, a minister in the prime minister's office, told parliament.
Chavan did not elaborate on the agreements or disclose when the satellites would be launched, but said ISRO was focusing on such commercial ventures.
"ISRO's marketing arm, Antrix Corporation, is being encouraged to promote the commercial use of capacity available on Indian space systems," Chavan said in parliament's upper house.
On April 23, an Indian-made rocket launched with Italy's Agile astronomical satellite and put it into orbit in ISRO's first commercial venture aimed at carving a slice of the global multi-billion-dollar space launch market.
India wants to compete with the US, Russia, China, Ukraine and the European Space Agency in offering commercial satellite launch services, a market worth up to 2.5 billion dollars a year.
However, Chavan said ISRO's "capabilities and developing alliances for global marketing will be considered only after meeting national needs."
India started its space programme in 1963, and has since developed and put its own satellites into space.
ISRO has designed and built launch rockets to reduce its dependence on overseas space agencies, but has only recently begun exploring commercial spin-offs.
It carried out the first successful launch of a domestic satellite, which weighed 35 kilogrammes, by a home-built rocket in 1980.
