The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) created a world record with a perfect ten! This record is the first one people are talking about but the agency has several world records to its credit, from owning the largest constellation of birds with sharp eyes in the skies, to having pioneered `direct to home' television transmission way back in the seventies, well before cable television became a household name.

On April 28, 2008 the Indian space agency created a unique world record by successfully launching 10 satellites in one go, shattering the previous record of a Russian rocket which was actually a modified intercontinental ballistic missile that launched 8 satellites in one shot last April 17, 2007.

This is really not an easy record to pluck, since launching 10 satellites in outer space has its own challenges as there is every chance that collisions may happen. Immense precision is required since when the tricky operation starts the rocket is already traveling at a speed of 7.5 kilometers per second or blazing at 27,000 kilometers per hour and everything has to happen in a flash.

The global community also joins in applauding this unique feat Indian feat; Mr. Jean-Yves Le Gall CEO of Arianespace, Paris told this correspondent `launching simultaneously ten satellites is a great achievement'.

Compare this to the maximum 5 satellites that NASA has ever launched in one go as part of its Themis mission on February 17, 2007 when it launched 5 satellites in one shot.

The Indian space agency, set up 35 years ago is really a baby among the world's space faring nations. This was its 26 th launch of a rocket from India's only space port Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh.

Compare this to the hundred of launches that have been undertaken by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Russian and European counterparts. The Space Shuttle itself has undertaken over 110 missions.

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) with it's over 16,000 employees has mastered these demanding space technologies indigenously against great odds as the agency has always lived under international technology denial regimes thanks to India's nuclear test conducted way back in 1974 at Pokharan.

But the Indian scientists converted this challenge into an opportunity, since when fish was denied they went ahead and learnt fishing, defeating the very purpose of imposing sanctions. Now ISRO is ready to corner a slab of the international space market as its costs are almost a half of what other agencies incur.

Against this back drop there are several other creditable achievements to the Indian space community. India has a whopping 11 national communications satellites in orbit simultaneously the largest constellation for any country in the entire Asia-Pacific region.

India today undoubtedly has one of the largest national networks of operational satellites any where in the world, no timid achievement for a country still struggling to keep a third of its population barely above the poverty line, but then as ISRO says for very rupee spent on the space program the return has been two rupees. This has been achieved with less than a one billion dollar a year budget, compared to the over 17 billion dollars that NASA spends annually.

India's remote sensing capabilities are now almost legendary in the world. Today there are 7 Indian made and operated remote sensing satellites in orbit, the largest number by any country in the civilian domain.

With a capability to map at a resolution of less than a meter, which means you can literally count the number of military tanks stationed anywhere on this Earth! Almost a fifth of the global market for remote sensing images at a resolution of 5-6 meters has already been captured by India and now with this twin pair of dedicated mapping satellites already in orbit of the Cartosat series even higher resolution images will be available to the global community from India. But to capture a significant part of the over US$ 140 billion launcher market may take long as India's larger rocket the Geo-synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) is still in its adolescence.

Perfect ten!

The Indian rocket the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) the smaller of the two Indian rockets and its real workhorse in its 12 th consecutively successful launch placed 2 Indian and 8 foreign satellites in their precise orbits.

The PSLV weighed a whopping 230 tons or as much as the weight of 50 elephants and stands as high as a 12 storey building at over 44 meters in length it hoisted 10 satellites into orbit. It carried two Indian satellites and eight foreign satellites launched on a commercial agreement which earned India over half a million dollars.

Almost 15 minutes into this 13 th flight of the PSLV the 690 kg Indian mapping satellite called Cartosat 2-A satellite was put into orbit. It was really the most important passenger on board it's really a high resolution mapping satellite, which can from its over 600 kilometer perch distinguish objects as small as a car.

Almost a minute later an experimental remote sensing satellite called the Indian Mini Satellite-1 was put into orbit. Now with the two big daddies out of the way, the trickiest part dropping off all the babies that were on board began. Dubbed `babies' they are really nano-satellites each weighing between 3-16 kilograms.

These were sequentially dropped of one by one, with a gap of 20 seconds each with the mission ending almost 20 minutes after lift off. These experimental nano satellites have been made by university students from Canada, The Netherlands, Japan, Denmark and Germany. These 8 satellites are really test beds meant for pushing the frontiers of satellite technology towards making affordable satellites. These new birds use basic off the shelf electronics and have short mission lives of a year or two at most. The total weight of these Nano-satellite on this record breaking Indian mission was just about 50 kg.

India's next big challenge is the launch of Chandrayaan-1 (Moon Craft), the country's maiden shot at the moon to be launched later this year using the PSLV. A US$ 100 million mission it is meant for mapping the moon surface in detail like never before and will undertake the most intense search of water on our nearest planetary neighbor.

This is first multi-continent mission in several decades, and also literally one where the tables have been turned around for once. In this mission countries like USA, UK and Sweden are being given a literal free ride to the moon as India is just not charging them anything for taking their instruments to the moon. The recent Japanese and Chinese mission carried only instruments from their own countries, while ISRO in its magnanimity opened its heart and coffers so that the global lunar community could join in this new race to the moon, now being led by the Asian nations.

India's mark on space faring is now indelible with a mission for robotic landing on the moon already slated for 2012 and space crafts to Mars, an asteroid and Sun already under planning. The Indian space agency is already eyeing sending an Indian up on an Indian rocket from Indian soil within the next few years as Dr. G. Madhavan Nair, Chairman, Indian Space Research Organization told this writer `twenty years from now when space travel is likely to become mundane like airlines travel today, we don't want to be buying travel tickets on other people's space vehicles'.