The Hindu Business Line : Regional GPS system in 5 years, says ISRO chief

Bangalore, Sept. 4 The country’s own regional ‘GPS’ should be in place in five years, giving a push to efficient air traffic management, transportation and personal positioning applications.

The first of the seven satellites of the Rs 1,600-crore Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) will be launched in 2010 “and the entire constellation will be in place by 2012,” said Mr G. Madhavan Nair, ISRO Chairman and Secretary, Department of Space.

ISRO will make and launch the navigation-only satellites on its PSLV rocket. The design of the system and the 1-1.5-tonne class satellites has been completed and protomodels are being finalised, according to Mr Nair, who was at a two-day UN-organised International Committee on Global Navigation Satellite Systems held here on Tuesday.

Benefits

Mr Nair said positioning would revolutionise the next decade and touch all aspects of human life, just as cell-phones have ruled this decade. The regional navigation system would also improve fleet monitoring and management, trains, land survey and disaster relief and rescue operations. The main beneficiary would be civil and military aviation, which would get maximum accuracy in landing position and time.

Global support

The meeting chaired by Mr Hans Haubold, Director of the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UN-OOSA), is looking at evolving a platform for global GNSS cooperation.

GNSS, according to Dr S.V. Kibe, head of ISRO’s SatNav Programme, would spawn a new industry to make receivers, ground station equipment, digital map providers, among others. The meeting also looked at issues of harmonisation and inter-operability of systems and smooth transit between regions.

Countries are now dependent on the US GPS, the only working positioning system, and have been forced to fine-tune or augment their systems, in particular for aviation needs.

Some are investing heavily and racing to develop their own global systems similar to GPS in the next three to five years; among them are Russia with its GLONASS and Europe with the multi-nation €2.5-billion Galileo. Japanese, Chinese and Nigerian navigational versions are also coming up.

Mr K.N. Suryanarayana Rao, Project Director, INRSS, said the country’s other satnav project — the Indian GPS augmentation project called GAGAN — had been tested at 18 domestic airports and would enter the operational stage. The satellite-based augmentation system would be launched in 2010 when ISRO puts up its GSat-4 carrying a navigational payload. ISRO and the Airports Authority of India have jointly sponsored GAGAN.

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