Article Posted on : - Aug 11, 2014

HYDERABAD (PTI): ISRO is planning to develop communication satellites in higher frequency bands and power and data handling capacity in the range of 100 Gigabits per second to meet the growing demands of broadband internet and rural telecom connectivity, ISRO chairman K Radhakrishnan has said.

Radhakrishnan also said the premier space research organisation is looking for suitable foreign partners to acquire the technology and upgrade ISRO's current satellite platforms to meet the future demands.

"For the future, we are looking for communication satellites in the higher frequency bands with about 15 KW of power and data handling capacity in the range of 100 Gigabits per second that can meet the ever growing demand in the country towards broadband internet, rural telecom connectivity etc," the chief of the Indian Space Research Organisation said.

He was speaking on Sunday at the convocation of BITS-Pilani Hyderabad campus.

Besides launching new satellites, the organisation has also plans of replacing the ageing satellites and enhance the observation capability to the level of 0.25 m spatial resolution and provide new capability for imaging from geo stationary orbit with 50 m spatial resolution, he said.

ISRO is also partnering with Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA to jointly develop a dual frequency microwave imaging satellite by 2020, Radhakrishnan said.

"In this scheme of alliance, ISRO is responsible for the overall satellite platform, S Band synthetic aperture radar and the launch of the satellite by GSLV," he explained.

On the moon mission, he said India is in the process of developing its own Lander-module and lunar rover as well as orbiter craft for Chandrayaan-2 that is targeted for launch by GSLV within the next three years.

Elaborating on the Mars mission, the ISRO head stated that the Mars orbiter space aircraft has traversed nearly 88 per cent distance along its designated path to the red planet.

"The next operational milestone is the insertion of the spacecraft into the Martian orbit on September 24, 2014.

If successful, India will be the first Asian country to orbit a spacecraft around planet Mars and the first country in the world to achieve this in the first attempt," he said.

According to him, a number of critical technologies are being developed for a possible human spaceflight in the future.