New full-time head for ISRO's Antrix

BANGALORE, INDIA: Senior space scientist V.S. Hegde was Saturday named the first full-time head of Antrix Corporation, the Indian space agency's commercial arm, to aggressively tap growing market for airwaves and other space products.

Hegde's appointment as chairman and managing director for Antrix comes about five months after it was decided to have separate full-time head to run the commercial arm following scrapping of its controversial deal with a private firm for scarce S-band allocation.

Until now, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) also headed the Antrix.

Hegde, a remote sensing application expert, was ISRO's scientific secretary.

Announcing the appointment of Hegde, ISRO chairman K. Radhakrishnana told reporters here that this was done to "ensure right kind of sharing of resources, allocation of resources, experts and priorities for Antrix".

ISRO and Antrix had received flak earlier this year over a pact with private firm Devas Multimedia on allocation of S-band airwaves.

The deal was scrapped in February when the central government decided to restructure Antrix with a full-time head.

ISRO had said it had yet to launch the satellite from which the S-band was to be allocated and hence there was no loss to it or the country from the deal.

Antrix was set up in 1992 for commercial exploitation of ISRO's expertise in space science.