Cartosat-1 attracts attention of four Countries

India recently launched two satellites into the space using a polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. One of these two was a remote sensing satellite named Cartosat-1. Now the ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) has reported that as many as four countries have shown interest in using its applications. The four countries are China, Japan, Germany, and the UAE.

Cortosat-1 is the 11th satellite in the series of remote sensing satellites for the ISRO and is designed to be used for cartographic applications. ISRO Chairman Madhavan Nair in a statement to the press said that ISRO would be using the satellite for India’s own requirements for the first year and later looks at exploiting it for commercial purposes where the requirements of other countries comes in.

The satellite cost the nation in the range of Rs. 250 crores and an additional Rs. 75 crores were spent on the vehicle used to launch it into the orbit. The other smaller satellite named Hamsat cost another Rs. 3 crores. Much more was spent on the new launching facility at Sriharikota, which cost the nation a massive Rs 400 crores. However, this is much less than what it costs to launch a satellite into the space abroad.

ISRO plans to use the launch pad for commercial purposes when they are not using it for launching their own satellites.