THE Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) plans to rent foreign satellites for a short period to meet rising the rising demand for transponders, which the agency is unable to meet due, to low transponder capacity.
“Isro is exploring the possibility to get foreign satellites moved into our slots for a short period to meet the demand for transponders. Currently, we have orbital slots, which can accommodate up to 320 transponders,” said K Radhakrishnan, chairman of Isro.
He, however, said the proposed arrangement would only be for a short period till India was able to meet the demand through increasing its own transponder capacity. The techno-commercial process to acquire foreign transponder capacity by Isro is expected to be completed in the next few weeks.
Currently, Isro has 175 transponders with a mix of C, extended-C, Ku and S Bands. It has also taken 86 transponders on lease. Despite this, the space agency has not being able to cater to the rising demand for transponders in recent time.
According to Isro officials, there are huge orders from users such as DTH broadcasters, VSAT operators and disaster management service providers for transponders. The current demand for transponders from different users is pegged at around 200 and is expected to rise in the future.
The 11th Plan has envisaged increasing Isro’s transponder capacity to 500 from the current 211. However, the target is unlikely to be met, owing to some unsuccessful missions and premature terminations of satellite launches during this period.
“The idea behind acquiring foreign transponder capacity is also to keep some transponder capacity on standby to meet any exigency,” Radhakrishnan said.
