Indian Space Agency to Set Up Ground Stations in Russia, Japan and France

In 2016, an agreement to enhance bilateral space cooperation was signed between Roscomos, Russia's space agency, and the ISRO; similar agreements were inked with France and Japan as well.

New Delhi (Sputnik) — The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is in the process of setting up ground stations in countries like Russia, Japan and France, the space agency announced on Friday, with a view to improving the accuracy of its navigation systems.

"To improve the accuracy of the navigation system, we need ground stations at diversified locations. We are planning to have our ground stations in Russia, France and Japan," ISRO Chairman K Sivan said while addressing press in New Delhi on Friday.

Moreover, India will also set up five large ground stations and more than 500 small terminals in neighbouring countries, including Bhutan, Nepal, the Maldives, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

"These stations will add more navigational accuracy. So, we are going to set up our ground stations at different locations. They have asked us to set up ground stations for them in our country as well," K Sivan added.

The Russian space agency's station will be located in the Indian city of Bangalore, while the ISRO's ground station is expected to be set up in Novosibirsk.

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India's navigation service, named Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC), comprises of a total of seven satellites, of which three are in Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) while the remaining four are in Geosynchronous Orbit (GSO). Together, space and ground stations provide navigation signals to a variety of receivers and user devices.

The Indian government has taken concrete steps to proliferate the usage of indigenous satellite system and curb the country's dependency on US-operated GPS, which is widely used in India due to its free-of-cost availability and widespread availability in the open market.