Antrix: The Commercial Door for India's Space Program

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SUBJECT: Antrix: The Commercial Door for India's Space Program

REF: 09 NEW DELHI 705

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1. (SBU) SUMMARY: Antrix sells Indian space capabilities to the
commercial market, including foreign governments and private
companies, but the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is
responsible for delivering those capabilities. Antrix's budget and
income sources are not published and many details of its operations
and connections with other Government of India (GOI) bodies are
unclear. Although a relationship between India's civil and
military space activities certainly exists, it is not transparent.
It is therefore difficult to estimate the risk of dual-use
technology transfer for projects contracted through Antrix. END
SUMMARY


HOW DOES ANTRIX FIT INTO INDIA'S SPACE PICTURE?


2. (U) The Department of Space (DOS) is officially headed by the
Prime Minister and guided by the Space Commission. According to its
organizational charts, DOS has three main sub-organizations: Antrix,
the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO),and a group of
laboratories bureaucratically separate from ISRO. Antrix is a
wholly government owned company billed as the commercial arm of
ISRO. Its website (www.antrix.gov.in) suggests it is a "one-stop
shop" for space products and engages in eight business areas: remote
sensing services, spacecraft systems and subsystems, transponder
leasing services, launch services, mission support services, ground
system services, spacecraft testing facilities, and training and
consultancy services. ISRO is responsible for research,
development, management and operation of India's space capabilities
for government, commercial and at least some defense applications.



3. (SBU) Despite being listed as a separate agency on the DOS
organization chart, Antrix is better understood as an integral part
of ISRO. DOS Secretary Dr. Madhavan Nair is triple-hatted as the
Chairman of both ISRO and Antrix, as well as Secretary of the
Department of Space. Antrix is co-located with ISRO's headquarters
in Bangalore and does not have a separate address of its own.
ISRO's International Relations officer D. Gowrisankar describes
Antrix as a "commercial door" that gives non-GOI entities access to
ISRO's capabilities, and he emphasizes the need to understand that
ISRO and Antrix are essentially one entity.


4. (SBU) Muriel Noca, program manager for the Swiss Cubesat launched
by ISRO on September 23, told ESTOff that her organization
negotiated and signed a contract with Antrix, but all coordination
for launch activities was actually done with ISRO. A partial list
of Antrix customers and the products they have delivered can be
found on its website. (Comment: We understand that Antrix does not
possess any of the necessary expertise or capacity for designing,
building, or launching; ISRO is responsible for implementing what
Antrix sells. End Comment.)


5. (SBU) USG scientists have told EmbOffs that they avoid dealing
with Antrix wherever possible, preferring to pursue official
"government-to-government" agreements with ISRO, the Ministry of
Earth Sciences, and other government organizations. In part, this
is because Antrix has created difficulties in negotiations by, for

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example, wanting to charge fees for intra-USG sharing of information
acquired from joint satellite projects.


ANTRIX BUDGET AND INCOME SOURCES UNPUBLISHED


6. (SBU) Information on Antrix's budget and income sources is not
readily available. Gowrisankar and an Antrix consultant have told
Emboffs that Antrix gets its budget from the GOI and that all
revenues from sales go back to the GOI treasury, but they also
suggested that Antrix was looking to change this to keep more of
what it sells. In a June 2009 press interview, Antrix Managing
Director R. Sridhar Murthy said that revenue for 2007-08 was INR 940
crore (just over USD 200 million at an exchange rate of 46 INR/1
USD),he hoped 2008-2009 revenue would exceed INR 1,000 crore (USD
217 million),and noted that Antrix had a backlog of orders worth
INR 3,000 crore (USD 651 million) that they anticipated completing
over the next 3-4 years.


7. (U) ISRO posts its budget information on its website
(www.isro.org),including statements of its monthly accounts dating
back to May 2005. For fiscal year 2008-2009, ISRO's budget was INR
40.7 billion (approximately USD 840 million at current exchange
rates),revised downwards to INR 34.9 billion (USD 721 million).
The budget for 2009-2010 is nearly 22 percent larger than the
previous year, at INR 49.6 billion (USD 1 billion). The ISRO budget
breaks down into 5 areas: space technology (USD 698 million),space
applications (USD 112 million),space sciences (USD 58.5 million),
INSAT (USD 92 million),and administrative (USD 60.8 million).


NO BRIGHT BORDERS BETWEEN ISRO AND INDIA'S MILITARY


8. (SBU) There are significant gaps in our understanding of ISRO's
current relationship with the Ministry of Defense (MOD) and Defense
Research and Development Organization (DRDO),making it difficult to
characterize the potential for transfer to defense applications of
any technologies shared with ISRO. However, it appears very likely
that some links currently exist between the civilian and defense
organizations. Collaboration and technology transfer have taken
place in the past. Several prominent personalities have served at
both DRDO and ISRO - notably current ISRO Scientific Secretary
Appana Bhaskaranarayana (who will head ISRO's negotiating team at
the CSLA talks) and former Indian President Abdul Kalam who at one
time left ISRO to head India's missile program at DRDO. ISRO's
Delhi-based representative explicitly said that it was developing
indigenous GPS capabilities to support strategic defense
applications. (REFTEL)


9. (SBU) ISRO has launched MOD satellite payloads, and provides
remote sensing and radar data from its ostensibly civilian
satellites to MOD for military applications. News articles report
that ISRO has not released information related to defense-related
research conducted at its laboratories despite right-to-information
act requests. The MOD has developed a space cell (though it has not
yet, to our knowledge, instituted a planned aerospace command) to
coordinate with ISRO. The MOD acknowledged that it previously used
ISRO engine technology in its development of ballistic missiles.


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10. (SBU) COMMENT: ISRO's achievements are widely admired across
India and a source of pride for government officials and the general
public. Much of ISRO's space technology was developed while India
was under sanctions that prevented cooperation with the United
States and other countries. This contributed to creating a culture
that is not readily disposed towards sharing information with
outsiders. It also helped generate a strong sense of prickly pride
about ISRO's "indigenous" achievements that make the organization
largely unwilling to share credit publicly for joint ventures, and
quick to blame foreign partners when things go wrong. End Comment.


BIOGRAPHIES OF KEY ANTRIX AND ISRO OFFICERS

DR. MADHAVAN NAIR, SECRETARY DOS, CHAIRMAN OF ANTRIX AND ISRO


11. (SBU) Dr. Nair assumed charge in September 2003, and news
reports suggest that he may retire at the end of October. A protege
of former Indian President Kalam and former Project Director at the
Vikram Sarabhai Space Center (VSSC),Dr. Nair is a leading rocket
systems technologist and made significant contributions to the
development of multistage satellite launch vehicles. He was also
instrumental in the indigenous development of liquid propulsion
cryogenic engines, helping India overcome trade sanctions that had
been imposed in response to India's 1998 nuclear tests. Born in
1943, Dr. Nair has eight published works and has received more than
35 awards and honors, including India's third and second highest
civilian awards. A devoted Indian nationalist, Dr. Nair remains one
of the few top scientists in India who has never received any
foreign education or training. In meetings, he regularly emphasizes
India's "indigenous" achievements, especially self-reliance in high
technology areas and bringing the benefits of space technology to
the Indian people, especially the rural poor. During his tenure,
Dr. Nair has championed programs including tele-education and
tele-medicine, which today connect over 10,000 classrooms and extend
to over 220 hospitals many in rural and other under-served areas.
(Note: In meetings, ISRO officials tend to point to these types of
activities to justify spending over a billion dollars on space while
a vast majority of India's populations still survives on less than
USD 2 dollars per day. End Note.)


K. RADHAKRISHNAN, DIRECTOR, VSSC


12. (SBU) News reports suggest that once Dr. Nair retires,
Radhakrishnan is likely to take his place. Prior to taking charge
of VSSC in December 2007, Radhakrishnan headed the National Remote
Sensing Agency (NRSA),the organization that supplies satellite
imagery to Indian governmental departments, and was also Director of
ISRO's Budget and Economic Management Analysis. Under his watch,
ISRO saw the expansion of its budget and the creation of Antrix. He
is a key player in ISRO, has been a member of the Indian delegation
to the UN Committee on the Peaceful Use of Outer Space since June
2006, was Vice Chairman of the inter-governmental Oceanographic
Commission of UNESCO, and founder of the Indian Ocean Global Ocean
Observing System.

SRIDHARA MURTHY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ANTRIX CORPORATION


13. (SBU) Murthy is currently Executive Director of Antrix, and

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previously served as ISRO's Scientific Secretary. He was
instrumental in opening up the lucrative launch services market for
Antrix, achieving a commercial launch services agreement with the
European Space Agency that enabled the launch of six European
satellites in 2008. He also negotiated the launch in February 2009
of Techstar, Israel's first dedicated surveillance satellite.
During his tenure as ISRO's Scientific Secretary, he oversaw the
first US-India Space Conference in 2004 and set the stage for ISRO's
active cooperation with NASA. He holds a post-graduate degree from
the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.

APPANA BHASKARANARAYANA, ISRO SCIENTIFIC SECRETARY


14. (SBU) Bhaskaranarayana became ISRO's Scientific Secretary in
2007, and manages the organization's satellite programs and
associated applications. He obtained a Bachelor's degree in
Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology of Chennai in
1960, and began by designing and developing communication systems.
We know little about his career before 2007, but have heard from a
source close to ISRO that he spent much of his time at DRDO before
coming to ISRO.

Roemer