India Launches Five Foreign Satellites

India's space agency on Monday launched five foreign satellites, reflecting its ambition to get a bigger cut of the world's $300 billion annual space business. The launch also became a vehicle for India's new Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, to promote his regional political agenda--namely, to resuscitate India's influence as a regional power and to project himself as a champion for neighboring countries, where China has expanded its footprint. In a speech praising the launch, Mr. Modi called on Indian scientists to develop a satellite that would be shared with neighboring nations "as a gift from India." The space shot's main cargo on Monday was Spot-7, a high-resolution earth-observation satellite belonging to Airbus Defence & Space Co. of Europe. It also carried four other smaller satellites: AISAT from the German Aerospace Center; NLS7.1 and NLS7.2 from Canada's University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies' Space Flight Laboratory; and VELOX-1 from Nangyang Technological University, Singapore. More

(Source: Wall Street Journal - Jul 2)