The Parliament was informed that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has launched a total of 129 satellites of Indian origin and 342 foreign satellites of 36 countries since 1975, of which 39 satellites are commercial satellites and rest are nano satellites.
Dr Jitendra Singh, Union Minister of State for Space, informed the parliament that India has a total of 53 operational satellites in space providing various identified services to the nation. He further added that a total 21 of these are communication satellites, eight are navigation satellites, 21 are Earth observation satellites and three are science satellites.
Providing further detail, the government informed the parliament that from 2016-2017 to 2021-2022, a total of 285 customer satellites from 29 foreign countries were successfully launched on-board PSLV on a commercial basis. The number of foreign satellites launched year-wise are 122 in 2016-2017, 57 in 2017-2018, 32 in 2018 -2019, 50 in 2019-2020, and 23 in 2020-2021.
The government further informed the parliament that ISRO has plans to launch more satellites to further enhance operational applications and cater to the needs of emerging applications and user requirements in the country.
Additionally, the parliament was also informed that the number of spacecrafts launched by space centres in the country from 2016-2017 to 2021-2022 till date, year-wise are: 2016-2017 (135), 2017- 2018 (67), 2018-2019 (40), 2019-2020 (56), 2020-2021 (30) and 2021-2022 (till date) 1. Of these, the spacecraft launched by the country for domestic use, year-wise are 13, 10, 8, 6, 7 and 1, respectively.
Meanwhile, the minister also stated that the country-wise breakup of number of foreign satellites launched during 2016-17 to 2021-22, was: Algeria (3), Australia (1), Austria (1), Belgium (3), Brazil (1), Canada (5), Chile (1), Colombia (1), Czech Republic (1), Finland (3), France (2), Germany (2), Indonesia (1), Israel (2), Italy (4), Japan (2), Kazakhstan (1), Latvia (1), Lithuania (7), Luxembourg (1), Malaysia (1), The Netherlands (2), Republic Of Korea (5), Slovakia (1), Spain (2), Switzerland (2), the UAE (1), the UK (6), and the US (222).
