Saarc satellite by Dec 16

India is expected to launch the Saarc satellite in December next year, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman Kiran Kumar said yesterday.

The satellite was proposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a gift to India's neighbours.

"The launch is expected next December once the final approval comes, about eighteen months is what we are talking about," Kumar told reporters in the southern Indian city of Bangalore.

Speaking on the sidelines of an event there, he said, "A meeting has already taken place with Saarc countries and the Indian Ministry of External Affairs is coordinating this. The satellite will have 12 Ku band transponders."

In June last year, Modi asked ISRO to develop a Saarc satellite which can be dedicated as a gift to India's neighbour to help them in areas such as telemedicine, education, weather forecasting and communication.

Modi also declared this decision at the Saarc Summit in Kathmandu last November, which was attended among others by Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

On Monday, deliberations were held with experts from other Saarc countries to finalise modalities for developing such a satellite exclusively for regional grouping.

Referring to the meeting, Kumar said, "We had about five representatives from each of the seven countries apart from India. It was an extremely good meeting where all participants were made aware of what can be done with the Saarc satellite, so every went back happy."

"Pakistan also participated, in fact they came in a larger number than the others. We had invited five participants from each country, the Pakistan team comprised of nine."

Stating that the proposed satellite will primarily be a communication satellite, Kiran Kumar said, "It will provide all of us an opportunity to make use of the transponder for various uses, whether for education, telemedicine or disaster monitoring."

"In addition, the satellite will have capability to interconnect all these eight countries for things like hotlines at political level, MEA interconnection, disaster monitoring constellation, and also for meteorological data dissemination," he said.

Kumar further added that Saarc counties have begun to think on a Saarc Consortium for future space programmes for the benefit of the region on lines of the European Consortium.

He said, "Each Saarc country will have some capacity exclusive to them, they will have also a ground station. They can do various things with this."