Public-Private partnership is the key to India’s space success, says Union Minister Jitendra Singh

Bengaluru, July 12 (KNN) Around 60 startups have been registered with ISRO since the "unlocking" of the Indian space sector by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and quite a few of them are dealing with projects related to space debris management, said Union Minister Jitendra Singh on Monday.

The other startups’ proposals vary from nano-satellite, launch vehicles, ground systems, research, etc.

During an event to launch the ISRO System for Safe and Sustainable Operation (IS⁴0M) at the ISRO Control Centre, in Bengaluru, Singh emphasised the need for public-private partnership in order to protect India’s interests in space by developing all-around capabilities in the domains of space transportation, debris management, infrastructure, and applications.

The IS⁴OM platform will play an important role in achieving India’s SSA (Space Situational Awareness) goals by providing comprehensive and timely information about the space environment to users. It will provide prompt, accurate and efficient information on on-orbit collision, fragmentation, atmospheric re-entry risk, space based strategic information, hazardous asteroids and space weather forecast.

Singh said that ISRO has been taking necessary measures to safeguard all its space assets from intentional and accidental close approaches by space objects, including operational spacecraft and space debris objects.

"The Space Situational Awareness activities have many strategic implications, such as identifying and monitoring other operational spacecraft with close approaches; having an overpass over the Indian region, intentional manoeuvres with suspicious motives; and re-entry within the Indian region." "The IS⁴OM facility will assist on a daily basis with operations by safeguarding the Indian space assets, mitigating collision threats from space objects through specific collision avoidance manoeuvres, providing information required for strategic purposes and research activities in space debris and space situational awareness," he added.

The importance of radars and optical telescopes as the main ground-based facilities for tracking space objects, including space debris, needs to be highlighted, as accurate orbital information from such ground-based sensors is a prerequisite for mitigating any collision threats to an operational space asset from other objects.

The backbone of the SSA system is the network of observational facilities in which there is a room for progress. Necessary Indian observational facilities  need to be setup for a meaningful and value-added SSA system development and alerts generation. (KNN Bureau)