Indian rockets aim for space market

NEW DELHI – India’s bid to become the first Asian nation to reach Mars sets a new benchmark for frugal interplanetary travel and puts it in a perfect position to grab more of the $300 billion global space market, experts say.

“Everyone wants to do low-cost missions nowadays,” Indian science author Pallava Bagla said. “Don’t underestimate it because it is a low-cost mission.”

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) staged a flawless launch on Nov. 5 of its Mars-bound spacecraft, loaded with a camera, an imaging spectrometer and a methane sensor to probe for life on the red planet.

The mission’s price, a record-low $73 million, “has been an eye-opener” for the world, said Susmita Mohanty, co-founder and chief executive of Mumbai’s Earth2Orbit, India’s first private space enterprise startup.

Now 21 Indian satellites circle Earth, giving support to telephone operators, broadcast outlets, weather forecasters and providing remote education and health care.

ISRO also earns money from launches through its commercial arm, Antrix, and since 1999 has launched 35 satellites for other nations, including France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, South Korea, Indonesia, Argentina, Israel, Canada, Denmark, Japan and the Netherlands.

“India is sitting on a space gold mine. Indian companies can leverage the impressive portfolio of space products and services that ISRO has developed,” said Mohanty.

Satellite launch industry revenues totaled $2.2 billion in 2012, while worldwide satellite industry revenues were $189 billion, according to the U.S. Satellite Industry Association.

IndiaSpend earlier wrote that ISRO’s total budget from 2003-04 to 2012-13 was Rs 43,867 crore. It can be assumed safely that ISRO’s budget, since its inception, would be only twice or thrice as much as NASA’s yearly budget (around $17 billion a year).

But even with such low annual allocations, ISRO has successfully launched 100 missions till now.NASA has launched more than 150 – many arguably grander – missions till now. Incidentally, NASA started in the 1958 while ISRO started in the 1960s.

Just that the entity which earns the revenues, Antrix Corporation, is different from the spending one, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). And Antrix was created precisely for this purpose, to monetise ISRO’s assets.

“When we set up Antrix our vision was clearly to delink the commercial and business side from day-to-day governmental functions. Moreover, we wanted to professionalize marketing activities and expand the reach of ISRO’s products and services across the world,” said former ISRO Chairman U R Rao told the Times of India newspaper in February 2011.

“Globally, the space industry business turnover was $160 billion, while at Antrix it was $200 million, Dr.V S Hegde said in July 2011 while taking over as chief of Antrixand as quoted in a report in The Hindu newspaper. Antrix’s board of directors then included names like Ratan Tata and J N Godrej