SRIHARIKOTA: ISRO officials on Thursday put up a brave face and said this failure will not deter them and affect NavIC services in any way. They maintained that four satellites are enough to deliver robust navigation services. Even if IRNSS-1A is taken-off from the NavIC constellation, six will be operational.
“As per the original plan, we have two spares ready for contingency measures. So, what we flew was one of the spares,” a senior official said.
Meanwhile, the crucial miniaturisation of chipsets that go into wireless devices such as cell phones and WiFi receivers was achieved. One of the important elements for NavIC is the user receivers. User receivers are dedicated for finding user position using NavIC satellite signals. Space Application Centre (SAC) is responsible for development of NavIC user receivers.
NavIC is an independent regional navigation satellite system developed by India. It is designed to provide accurate position information service to users in India as well as the region extending up to 1500 km from its boundary. It will provide two types of services, namely, Standard Positioning Service (SPS), which is provided to all the users and Restricted Service (RS), which is an encrypted service provided only to the authorised users. All the satellites of the NavIC constellation are configured identically. The satellites are configured with I-1K Bus to be compatible for launch on-board PSLV.
The `1,420 crore Indian satellite navigation system NavIC suffered setback in January this year, when three rubidium atomic clocks of IRNSS-1A put into orbit on July 1, 2013 stopped working. ISRO officials said it would take at least another 45 days for it plan for next satellite launch.