ISRO has plans to launch more number of satellites to further enhance operational applications

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has launched a total of 129 satellites of Indian-origin and 342 foreign satellites belonging to 36 countries since 1975, Union Minister of Science & Technology Jitendra Singh said on Thursday.

Of the total foreign satellites, 39 are commercial satellites and the rest are nano-satellites.

Further, Singh said in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha, India has a total of 53 operational satellites in space, providing various identified services to the nation. Twenty-one of these are communication satellites, eight are navigation satellites, 21 are Earth observation satellites and three are science satellites.

“The satellite-enabled data and services are being used for the benefit of various sectors of the country. These include television broadcasting, direct-to-home, ATM, mobile communication, tele-education, tele-medicine and advisories on weather, pest infestation, agro-meteorology and potential fishing zones,” added the Minister.

“Satellite data is also used for crop production estimation, crop intensification, and agricultural drought assessment, wasteland inventory, identifying ground water prospect zones, inland aquaculture suitability and disaster risk reduction,” Singh said.

The Minister informed that ISRO has plans to launch more satellites to further enhance operational applications and cater to the needs of emerging applications and user ministerial requirements in the country.

“Many of the applications have been effectively adopted by stakeholder departments for operational use,” he said, listing the applications.

He said the technology has been effectively used by:

* Potential Fishing Zone Forecast & Ocean State Forecast by Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services, (MoES)

* Crop Acreage and Production Forecasting & National Agricultural Drought Assessment and Monitoring System by Mahalanobis National Crop Forecast Centre, (MoA&FW)

* Biennial Forest Cover Assessment by Forest Survey of India (MoEF&CC),

* Irrigation Infrastructure Assessment by Central Water Commission (Ministry of Jal Shakti), Weather forecasting by India Meteorological Department (MoES)

* Ground Water Prospect and Suitable Recharge Locations’ mapping (Ministry of Jal Shakti)

*Integrated Watershed Management Programme & MGNREGA by MoRD