Agile takes Antrix to a different orbit

This has taken the company's turnover to Rs300 crore last fiscal and a profit of Rs30 crore. During 2002-03 Antrix posted a turnover of Rs180 crore.

Lanfranco Zucconi, managing director of Carlo Gavazzi Space SpA, Italy, was one of ISRO's special invitees to witness the successful mission of PSLV-C5 that placed the 1,360 Resourcesat 1 last October.

For ISRO, the 500kg-Agile will be the first real heavy third-party payload. The earlier third party payloads were - 45 kg DLR-Tubsat, Germany, 110kg Kitsat, Korea, 92kg Bird, Germany and 94kg Proba, Belgium.

According to ISRO chairman, G Madhavan Nair, India holds 15 per cent market share in the global remote sensing image market. The other major revenue source for Antrix is from transponder leasing. According to ISRO officials except for few transponders that are kept for redundancy needs, almost all the 143 transponders have been leased out.