ISRO Satellite Centre, Bangalore, turns 40 on Friday. From assembling the country's first satellite, the experimental Aryabhata, all of 360 kg, with Soviet help in the 1970s, ISAC has come a long way.
Today, it turns out sophisticated multi-band communications, observation and strategic spacecraft. It also made some business by building two satellites for European customers. More than 50 domestic satellites have flown out of here.
The Mooncraft of 2008, Chandrayaan-1, and April's advanced observation bird RISAT-1 also came out of ISAC. The INSAT fleet of communication satellites is the spine of television channels, telephone and Internet networks, telemedicine, distance education, radio networking, weather forecast and disaster warning.
Policy makers, agronomists and mining agencies among others use Earth pictures from remote sensing IRS satellites to track crops, minerals and forests.
ISAC plans to build a 5000-kg spacecraft in two years. A Mars spacecraft for 2013 is on the cards. An upcoming ring of navigational satellites will form an Indian GPS; it will boost positioning and timing for civil aviation, military use, ships, cars and other services.
Located on the old HAL airport road, ISAC is a lead space centres along with VSSC for rockets; and the SDSC for launches. The INSATs, the IRSs and the GSats are designed, developed, fabricated and tested here.
"[ISAC] is celebrating 40 years of fruitful existence on May 11, 2012," says an ISRO statement. On Friday, Dr K.Radhakrishnan, ISRO Chairman, formally launches the space centre's `ruby year' celebration.
BORN IN A SHED
India launched into the satellite era on May 10, 1972 by signing an agreement with the then USSR to build the ‘Aryabhata'. (By then, it was taking baby steps in rocket making at Thumba in Kerala.)
Soon, ISAC was born in an industrial shed in Peenya in north Bangalore. By the 1980s, it got its own campus on the other side of the city.
It now has two ‘satellite' campuses. ISITE (ISRO Satellite Integration and Test Establishment) came up in 2006.
Next on the cards is a Space Research Facility at Challakere in Chitradurga to augment assembling and support important and special projects. The 2300-strong centre is led by Dr T.K Alex, DirectorCurrently, ISAC is handling seven communication satellites, a meteorological satellite, Chandrayaan-2, Astrosat and the Space Capsule Recovery Experiment–2 and the Indo-French SARAL.