ISRO to boost NavIC, widen user base of location system

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is working on a series of improvements to the NavIC, or Indias equivalent of the Global Positioning System (GPS), so that more people are motivated to install it and use it. Plans are also afoot to make its reach global rather than circumscribe it to India and a limited territory around it.

NavIC ( with Indian Constellation), or the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS), is a constellation of seven satellites that is akin to the American GPS, the European Galileo and the Russian GLONASS, and can be used to track location. The first of these satellites (IRNSS-1A) were launched in 2013 and thelatest in 2018.

Currently, NavIC satellites orbit earth in a geostationary or geosynchronous (GEO) orbit, or about 36,000 km from earth. MEO orbits occupy a space between GEO and Low Earth Orbit (LEO), or about 250-2,000 km from earth.