Bengaluru: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief K Sivan said that opening up of space sector for private enterprises will help scale up benefits from space technology and space-based application is exploding exponentially and ISRO cannot handle it alone.
Sivan said that far-reaching reforms in space technology in India will put the country in the league of the select countries.
Speaking exclusively to ETV Bharat, ISRO chief said,"Out of 360 billion dollar global space economy, India's contribution is only 3%. We wanted to take a major chunk of that. ISRO cannot do the job alone, we want private players."
Sivan also talked about the government's decision to establish an autonomous nodal agency for taking independent decisions for regulating the activities of private companies.
"Government has approved the establishment of an autonomous nodal agency - Indian National Space, Promotion and Authorisation Centre - for taking independent decisions with respect to permitting and regulating the activities of private companies in the space sector," said ISRO chief.
Read: Opening space sector will enable India to play important role in global space economy: ISRO Chief
The COVID-19-induced lockdown seems to have hit the Indian space missions after K Sivan confirmed that 10 space missions, being prepared for launch this year have been disturbed. Besides, the work on Gaganyaan and Chandrayaan missions have also stopped following the outbreak of the pandemic.
ISRO is dependent on the private sector for manufacturing equipment for its launch. The Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) which provide equipment to the ISRO are among the worst-hit due to the lockdown, coupled with migration of labourers.
After the hard landing of Chandrayaan-2 last year, ISRO had planned to launch Chandrayaan-3, which was scheduled to be launched later this year.
Gaganyaan, the human space mission, envisages to send three Indians to space by 2022. The four test pilots selected for this mission are currently undergoing training in Russia, but even that was impacted due to coronavirus lockdown in the country.
