India has nine operational satellites in the high earth orbit geostationary region.
Harshal Parikh used to tell people that he was a member of ISRO's Moon mission and that senior officials of Defence Research and Development Organisation his friends.
G Madhavan Nair said ISRO had got necessary approvals from the Union government for the project.
ISRO does not figure either in the main list of top 20 satellite operators or in the supplementary list of five operators that are on threshold of commercial success in a ranking done by Space News.
India is all set to script history by launching a record number of 22 satellites, including a number of micro and nano ones from foreign countries, in a single mission in May this year.
ISRO to launch EU satellite, earn $10 million
India is all set for the maiden launch on Monday of an indigenous winged Reusable Launch Vehicle--that is being dubbed as its own space shuttle--from Sriharikota spaceport in Andhra Pradesh.
It is scheduled for lift-off at 1658 IST on Thursday from the space port at Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, about 100 km from Chennai.
The American agency is in talks with ISRO to place its scientific instruments on the Indian spacecraft that will be sent on an unmanned mission to the moon in 2007.
Despite the odd time, hordes of enthusiasts had reached the island, some of them travelling long distances on two wheelers, to witness the historic moment.
'The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter imaged the area of the targeted Chandrayaan-2 Vikram landing site on October 14 but did not observe any evidence of the lander'
The Indian Space Research Organisation said that the countdown started at 6.51 am on Sunday.
Chandrayan's operations will be controlled by robots and cover 3.50 lakh kilometre within a period of two years, ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair said.
"We have been able to detect NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and the Indian Space Research Organisation's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft in lunar orbit with ground-based radar," said Marina Brozovic, a radar scientist at JPL and principal investigator for the test project.
The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle is carrying 1360-kg satellite 'Resourcesat -I'.
The spacecraft built by scientists of the Indian Space Research Organisation will be equipped with two advanced panchromatic cameras, with a spatial resolution of 2.5 metres and a swath of 30 km each.
A team of Indian Space Research Organisation scientists presented the first pictures of the Red Planet sent by Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday.
The launch is slated for 1658 IST from the space port at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh.
A recap of events that occurred in India in the past week.
While New Jersey, US-based OrbitBeyond leads a consortium of subcontractors who have designed and developed hardware for deep space missions, Bengaluru-based Team Indus is leading OrbitBeyond's lander engineering, reports T E Narasimhan.
ISRO has said once the Lunar night falls, there would be no sunlight for the lander to generate power for its working and also it was not designed to operate in the heavy cold temperature of Moon during the phase.
Prasar Bharti CEO K S Sarma on Friday said the state broadcaster's direct-to-home telecast will be launched on schedule from April 1.
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft has snapped a series of images during its flyby on September 17 of Vikram's attempted landing sight near the Moon's uncharted south pole.
Indian Space Research Organisation plans to undertake next month the first developmental flight of a "game-changer" rocket capable of launching four-ton class of satellites from Sriharikota spaceport, says its Chairman A S Kiran Kumar.
Antrix Corporation, the commercial arm of Indian Space Research Organisation, has signed an agreement with US-based Space Imaging to market and sell data worldwide.
All opposition parties should come together to get rid of the BJP-led NDA government to ensure "Modi-mukt Bharat", he said, reminding the audience of BJP's "Congress-mukt Bharat" slogan.