The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is drawing up plans to develop the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota into a centre for assembling satellites and rockets in the near future.
"Our vision is a quantum jump in satellites and launch vehicles to be dealt with in future years. The space port in Sriharikota should further develop into an area where the industries in India working for space would come together, assemble satellites and rockets there and move to the launch pad," ISRO Chairman K Radhakrishnan said.
He was addressing a meeting after the inauguration of the Oceansat-2 ground station at the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) this afternoon.
ISRO would work with the Andhra Pradesh government in visualising and making the space port development plan a reality, he said.
Describing INCOIS as a "symbol of synergy" between the Department of Space and the Ministry of Earth Sciences, Radhakrishnan said it exemplified how a user ministry could internalise inputs from space.
He also requested the Union Minister for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences Vilasrao Deshmukh to have a similar system in other departments that dealt with agriculture, water and minerals in the country.
ISRO and INCOIS were working together in the area of environment and climate monitoring, he said, adding that INCOIS was sending forecast to coastal areas based on inputs received from Oceansat-2 launched two years ago.
"The Megha-tropiques satellite that we will launch next month will give a lot of input on study of climate while another satellite Saral, that will be launched subsequently, will provide ocean altimeter data," the ISRO chief said.
Secretary in the Ministry of Earth Sciences Shailesh Nayak said an international training centre in operational oceanography would be set up at INCOIS.
"We have requested the state government to allot necessary land for this purpose," he said, while asking Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy to expedite the process.
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