Agency report

Chennai, Jul 13: An Indian university will soon have its own satellite, with the state-owned Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) promising to help it to put the satellite in space.

Sathyabhama University, a deemed educational institution here, has asked the ISRO to help it put an educational satellite into orbit.

The satellite is likely to be a nano-satellite - a miniaturised satellite of low weight and small size.

"Both post-graduate and undergraduate students will work on the project," said educationist Jeppiar who owns the university and several engineering colleges under it.

The university already has about 4,000 village resource centres linked to ISRO transmissions.

"You start the work, we will put the satellite up as early as possible," ISRO chairperson G Madhavan Nair told the university, at a convocation function Wednesday.

ISRO has already placed in orbit this January a nano-satellite, the 6-kg Pehuensat, designed by an Argentinian university along with an Indonesian satellite piggybacking on an Indian mapping satellite, the Cartosat-2.

For launching a 1-kg satellite, ISRO charges only $14,000. The fuel needed for a satellite launch costs around Rs.2,000 per kg and several tonnes of it are needed to put one satellite in space.

ISRO is now looking at semi-cryogenic fuel whose cost will be around Rs.20 per kg, as highly purified kerosene is likely to be a major component of rocket fuel in the near future.

This year ISRO has on cards the launch of NLS-4, a cluster of six nano-satellites of 1-5 kg, in a mission coordinated by the Toronto University. NLS-4 may be launched towards the end of 2007.