National space agency ISRO has called a meeting of suppliers later this month to raise the levels of their contribution to the country’s satellite programme.

The June 23 conference of spacecraft industry suppliers is aimed at helping them to evolve from suppliers of small components to providers of bigger and whole sub-systems and systems, said a senior ISRO official. This, he said, would help the space agency to assemble and launch its spacecraft faster for various national uses.

ISRO Satellite Centre (ISAC) estimates a demand for 71 satellites in the next five years, including the exploratory ones to study Moon and Sun.

“The launch vehicle industry contributes in a much larger way, may be to around 90 percent. We would like the satellite industry also to get closer to that level. The conference will check the pulse of the industry and come out with some solutions,” the official said.

Currently 30-odd Indian spacecraft are in orbit. They belong to communication, Earth observation and navigation genres orbit in space and supporting uses such as broadcasting, communication, Internet, mapping, estimation of natural resources, search and rescue, crop and weather forecasting and location-based services.

ISRO hopes to get entire systems supplied in areas such as telemetry, power systems and satellite control systems; currently vendors supply smaller components of each of these systems.

Seeks industry help to speed up assembly of 71 satellites by 2021