In an interactive session at the Geosmart India Conference and Expo, Prakash Chauhan, Director of ISRO’s National Remote Sensing Centre, said sovereign satellite constellations for providing positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) services were the need of the hour, given the current geopolitical realities.
India operates the Navigation with Indian Constellation (NAVIC), its own regional navigation system with 11 satellites, of which only four are fully operational. Another four satellites are being used for one-way message broadcast, one has been decommissioned, and two could not reach their intended orbit.
Chauhan said ISRO has already drawn up plans to augment the NAVIC platform and new satellites will be launched beginning next year.
At least five countries have their own fully operational navigation systems – GPS of the US, GLONASS of Russia, Galileo (European Union), BeiDou (China) and QZSS (Japan).
Chauhan said that for acceptance of the NAVIC system on a larger scale, it will have to provide global coverage and not limit itself to the Indian subcontinent.
The NAVIC system covers the entire Indian region and also the region extending up to 1,500 km around the country on dual frequencies in L5 and S bands. L5 and S bands are radiofrequency bands used in satellite navigation communication.
The government on Monday told Parliament that several airports, including Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru, saw GPS spoofing signals last month, but said there was no impact on flight operations.
The spoofing of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) is an attempt to manipulate the navigation systems in a way that they show the wrong position, speed or time.