 Hello and welcome to NewsClick, today we have with us the Raghunandan from Delhi Science Forum. We will be going to talk about the ISRO launches. Sir, we know that ISRO has launched 104 satellites and everyone is talking about what a big record it is, almost 2 to 3 times of the previous records. So what do you have to say about that? So, I think there has been the usual Indian tendency to blow your own trumpet and talk about big records. We went to town when India sent a rocket to the moon to Mars, although in technological terms neither was a great achievement and to me frankly this launch by ISRO also falls under that category, yes it is a world record. But I do not think there is any great technological innovation that ISRO has done to enable this record. It is a record, but as the chairman of ISRO himself said that the launch was less about records than about proving the viability and reliability of ISRO as a launch vehicle which can service a variety of clients. And I think if we are to really understand the significance of this launch, one ought to be looking at where does ISRO fit in the global picture of commercial launch vehicles, what ISRO has done with science and technology, what it hopes it would do. And I think the more interesting part which almost no media has covered has been what are these satellites that have been launched, we are talking about 104 satellites, but if you looked at the media coverage they could be match boxes, we do not know what these satellites are about and I think there is a big story there which I think people would like to know about. Should you then please tell us about the satellites, I mean we are talking about the records, but we do not really know what these satellites are about. The satellites fall into two broad categories. One is in India has launched its own satellite which is a remote sensing satellite, part of what is called the CatoSat series. As the name suggests it is a cartographic satellite, it is remote sensing, mostly focused on coastal areas, on road networks and so on, that is what the satellite would do. That is roughly half the weight of the total payload carried by C37, the launch vehicle, about 700 odd kilos. The remaining 680 odd kilos are distributed among the 103 other satellites which. So most of these satellites, these other satellites are what are known in the parlance as nanosatellites, they are very tiny satellites. The Indian ones, two which ISRO has put up ISRO nanosatellites are both roughly in the 8 to 10 kilo range, but almost all the international satellites we have put up are much smaller in the 4 kilos range of satellites. I think of particular interest is the fact that almost all the international satellites that this launch put up follow the CubeSat standards. That is a new standard that has been around for about 15 years where most other satellites which are put in space are custom built, they tend to be very large and so on. With the advances in technology, particularly miniaturization like most of the jobs that a huge mainframe computer would have done 30 years ago is today done by a small laptop. Same thing is happening in space technology where small satellites are able to do the job which earlier you would have required very large satellites to do. One particular company has put up in this launch a total of 88 satellites. In one go, basically because this company wants to have a set, it is called a constellation like with stars of 150 odd satellites all in an orbit around the earth which together will provide you 24-7 coverage of the entire planet at any given point of time. So a client can go to that company and say I want a photograph of the port in Vishagapatnam and you will get it. Another client can ask for a shot of the port in London, you can get that as well and they are doing this not with these large satellites but with these tiny satellites. The other advantage of these cube sats they are called is that they are all in the 10 centimeter cube range or multiples. So it is 10 by 10 by 10 or 20 by 20 by 20 like that. Most of these satellites are in the 3 times 10 so it is called a 3 cube standard and the good part about these satellites is that they all use standard electronic components which you can buy in the market. So designing satellites is no longer the big mysterious custom made job it used to be earlier and in fact the cube sat standard arose out of universities in order to get students and academicians involved in this which otherwise they would not be able to do and because of the standard size the launching also becomes easy. So in fact in yesterday's launch by ISRO you had these 100 odd satellites which were together and they have a special launch container and the ISRO launch vehicle basically once it entered orbit just every 10 seconds would show out a canister each of which released 3 nano satellites and thereby covering the earth. So I think the methodology of this was interesting the nature of these satellites is interesting and it indicates a future of what is likely to happen in space. I think more and more you are likely to see the large custom designed satellites being replaced by smaller satellites and I think that is going to be a trend. I have just spoken to you about the constellation of 88 satellites called the Dove satellites the other highly innovative set of satellites put up by the ISRO launch yesterday were the Lima satellites 8 of them put up for Spire Global. These are extremely innovative in the sense that while most other satellites do imagery capturing visual images from the earth's surface this satellite is engaged in capturing radio signals. So it is audio based they look at GPS signaling from ships and other cargo vessels moving around on earth for various clients and in theory a few years down the road with sufficient satellites around they should be able to capture the movement virtually of any cargo carrying vehicle whether on land sea or air. The same set of satellites also uses a technique to use GPS signals use the effect that they have going through the atmosphere which bends these signals and then from that obtain atmospheric data weather data and data that relates to climate change and I think these would be of very high value both scientifically and commercially in the years to come. I think ISRO could do very well in learning how to innovate products in terms of satellites and how they are used rather than only be looking at launch vehicles. International media is focusing a lot on this achievement by India they are calling it the new space race so can you please throw some light on that. Yeah well in I think that is the significant part of the ISRO launch is that it cements India's position in the international launch market particularly for launching small satellites in low earth orbits part of this like with many areas in which Indian science and technology has worked has been India is constrained we do not have access to the latest technologies we have not developed the latest technologies ourselves but within the limitations of what we can do we try to achieve the maximum that we can and do various innovations within that we have done that in space and we have done that in nuclear as well and I think this is an example so we have specialized in a niche market if people want a large communication satellite for television coverage big military satellites they will not come to India at the moment because India still has only the polar satellite launch vehicle the PSLV we do not yet have our GSLV which should be used for the larger vehicle launches but for smaller launches people are now increasingly looking at India. This example I gave you of these 88 nanosatellites the same company had come to ISRO before had launched 12 satellites earlier and have now come with a repeat order to complete their constellation by putting 88 satellites across another company which has also been put in there which is an equally interesting exercise in satellite usage has come and put up a dozen or so satellites again coming specifically to ISRO having looked at other options earlier so ISRO is establishing its position and consolidating its position in launching small satellites in low earth orbits which even in in Asia China does not do as a commercial venture and Japan and South Korea have not yet reached that stage so it's certainly true that India has marked out a space but I think to put it in perspective India has carved out a niche for itself but in a 300 billion dollar space launch market in the world this is a very small niche India for even for its own communication satellite needs is still going to the European space agency or to other launches and is not able to do those by itself what do you think is the ISRO's plan next well this year should mark the beginning of India stabilizing its GSLV launches we've got two or three GSLV launches slated for this year and I think that will be interesting to watch because India has had three successive successful launches of the GSLV which is a landmark and normally is used as a standard to judge whether you have reached a level of competence and you can say yeah we've got a good reliable launch vehicle if we do another two or three successive launches of the GSLV this year I think we would have entered a new phase India is also trying out a reusable launch vehicle that is a rocket that you send up but which comes back and the prototype that India has developed looks very much like the American Space Shuttle it's that kind of a thing whereas reusable rockets in the US and elsewhere which are being designed are standard vertical rockets which go up and come back down the same way whereas the one India's designed will land like an aircraft on a runway the way the space shuttle did if you do develop reusable launch vehicles that will further reduce the cost of launches so India would have then gone into another league in terms of the competition it can enter for commercial launches and then as far as the science is concerned India is planning a couple of interesting shots to Mars and to the moon and that we will watch out for not this year but in the years to come thank you so much sir that was very informative thank you for watching news click we'll come back to you with more such stuff