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News Highlights     The concept of “small is beautiful” popularized by the British economist E F Schumacher seems to be influencing the satellite development sector in a big way. With the idea of small, mini, micro and nano satellites catching on, even resources poor developing countries with a not so well evolved  technological and industrial […]

Slow pitch For, way back in 1963 when India took her first step into space with the setting up of the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) in the fishing hamlet of Thumba on the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of the South Indian state of Kerala, US made available Nike Apache sounding rockets to […]

Vital synergy India needed an effective Command and Control organization over its nuclear weapons because of various international and regional concerns in the immediate aftermath of the nuclear tests in 1998. It is high time now to review whether India has been successful in establishing a robust Command and Control organization. There is no doubt […]

War in orbit A well equipped, ground based tracking infrastructure is vital to constantly monitor the position of an orbiting satellite and detect its ground track with precision. The satellite pass prediction and real time satellite tracking constitutes the mainstay of the tracking activities. In the ultimate analysis, tracking is also a fundamental step towards […]

Security agencies and defence forces in various parts of the world including India are increasingly falling back on satellite systems for a variety of end uses centring round communications, imaging, surveillance and reconnaissance, electronic and signal intelligence, navigation and ocean watch. But one of the pitfalls associated with the use of satellite systems is their […]

For centuries, the mighty and magnificent Himalayas have remained an integral and inseparable part of the national consciousness of India. India’s spiritual literature describes Himalayas as the veritable symbol of divinity, nobility and immortality. As the snow clad abode of Gods, Himalayas continues to be held in reverence by a large segment of the Indian […]

In what has been described as a major step towards acquiring an independent satellite based navigation capability, India’s first dedicated GPS (Global Positioning System) satellite IRNSS-1A was successfully placed into orbit by means of the four stages, Indian space work-horse, Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) in July 1. It took around 20 minutes for the […]

Given the Indian context the thought arises whether the efficacy of the Network Centric Warfare system (NCW) depends on the existence of a Chief of Defence Staff and the absence of turf wars between the users of the system. Concomitantly, will turf wars disappear once the CDS is operational? As things stand an indigenously developed […]

When the August-launched GSAT-7 satellite became operational in mid-September last year the Indian Navy became better able to keep under surveillance its area of concern which spans three huge water bodies-the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. It will improve the network centricity between its airborne, surface and sub-surface weapons platforms. […]