Antrix has done a great job of marketing secondary payload opportunities. Many university-satellites have been launched by PSLV; they've become the de-facto sma

Antrix has done a great job of marketing secondary payload opportunities. Many university-satellites have been launched by PSLV; they've become the de-facto small-satellite launch provider in a lot respects. My alma mater has launched a couple of satellites successfully [1], with the first one, Delfi-C3, launched from Sriharikota in 2008 (still operational!). Europe has been trying to push Vega [1] as the European offering in this market. It's exciting to see how the launcher space is developing, especially for small payloads. I know a few startups that are targeting this space because of studies, like undertaken by SpaceWorks [1][2], that point at the expected explosion within the coming 5 years. Given that I'm working on space debris risk mitigation at the moment, I'm looking at this from a somewhat different perspective. Most small-satellites to date have been launched to low enough orbits that they can meet the 25-year de-orbit guideline without too many issues. With the commercial market rapidly expanding though, there are a lot of applications that require higher orbits, and that's when space debris becomes a huge issue. Keeps me in a job! All in all, great news for ISRO, and hopefully a sign of more international collaboration and commercial expansion in the years to come. [1] http://www.delfispace.nl http://www.delfispace.nl [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_%28rocket%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_%28rocket%29 [3] http://www.sei.aero/eng/papers/uploads/archive/IAC-14.E6.1.3.pdf http://www.sei.aero/eng/papers/uploads/archive/IAC-14.E6.1.3... (PDF) [4] http://www.sei.aero/eng/papers/uploads/archive/SSC14-I-3_v1.0.pdf http://www.sei.aero/eng/papers/uploads/archive/SSC14-I-3_v1.... (PDF)