ISRO

ISRO to outsource rocket-work to private companies For the first time since the success of India's maiden unmanned moon mission, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is ready to Images from Chandrayaan 1 Hubble Space Telescopeoutsource more high-end work to private companies — everything from building more complicated systems to assembling it. According to aerospace industry officials and others familiar with the discussions, proposals are being readied wherein private participation will be invited to build and run competing systems. The commercial-aerospace industry is now eager to play a larger role in the space missions and tap the outsourcing work offered by ISRO which has an annual budget of $1.01 billion for 2009-2010. It has a spending blueprint of Rs 12,400 crore ($3 billion) for its manned space exploration and around Rs 425 crore will be spent for the second unmanned lunar mission — Chandrayaan-2. It also has huge spending plans for missions to Mars and various domestic and international satellite launches. This is particularly relevant as India has now stepped up the number of satellites it sends into space. ISRO's senior space scientist George Koshy who had also worked on Chandrayaan-1 as mission director for PSLV, says: "Earlier, we used to do one launch in two-three years. Now, we do tree-five PSLV launches alone in a year. For that, we need more low-cost manpower and better collaborations.” Koshy says the confidence other countries are reposing on Indian capability to make good satellites is increasing and they need more private partners to share the work load. "We work at just 15-20% of the cost spent by the US on their missions,” he says
Nitika
PGDM-3rd sem
sec-B