With a land mass of more than 3 million square kilometers and a population of well over a billion, India has many reasons to develop earth observation capabilities. This could be for applications ranging from agriculture to urban planning. The country has a long history of launching and relying on these satellites, which India usually calls remote sensing satellites. India claims to have the largest national constellation of such birds and launched its eighteenth remote sensing satellite this year after two big failures in 2010. In addition, India adopted a new Remote Sensing Data Policy — the RSDP 2011 — in July to open the market more than it has been in the past.

To review the RSDP 2011, first one must identify the players. The Indian Department of Space (DOS) is the central agency for all actions under the RSDP. The government calls these activities the Indian Remote Sensing Satellites program (IRS). Space activities are conducted by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), which operates the satellites and runs the National Remote Sensing Center (NRSC). The NRSC processes data from the Indian remote sensing satellites while Antrix Corporation, a commercial arm of DOS, sells the satellite imagery.

The Indian IRS operational history started with the launch of IRS-1A in 1988. In April 2011, ISRO successfully launched the ResourceSat-2 satellite, after failures the previous year of two satellites. The new satellite upgrades an existing ResourceSat-1, giving India a fleet of 10 remote sensing satellites, including ResourceSat 1, TES, Cartosat 1, 2, 2A and 2B, IMS-1, RISAT-2 and Oceansat-2.

The RSDP 2011 is a major update from the previous policy that had been in place since 2001. At that time, ISRO held a monopoly on the entire sector, including even the use of data from foreign sources. Moreover, the 2001 policy limited the open release of data to resolution of 5.8 meters, far higher (i.e. of lower quality) than what was available on the satellites.

RSDP 2011 is said to open use of IRS data by other government agencies, which would permit agencies other than DOS to acquire and distribute data in India. It explicitly provides that data up to 1-meter resolution shall be distributed on a non-discriminatory basis. To protect national security, data with finer resolution must be screened and cleared.

This new policy came about partially in response to strong criticism of the ISRO monopoly. The Indian Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) issued a tough performance audit in May 2011, noting big inefficiencies in the NRSC and claiming that almost 80 percent of the data was being unused. (By contrast, some reports say that other remote satellite systems use 90 percent of data.) Based on the audit, some critics claimed that ISRO had turned India’s large fleet of remote sensing satellites into “white elephants in space,” because their data was being wasted.

CAG maintained that the revenue from sales of IRS data was not even covering the cost of operating the satellites, much less the capital cost of the fleet. In fact, revenues were covering only an average of 21.5 percent of operating costs. CAG’s numbers indicated that between 2002 and 2009, India spent close the equivalent of $550 million in capital investment to construct and launch the seven satellites that were currently operating, while selling data worth about $39 million, recovering only 7.2 percent of the total expenditure.

Archived data was not being marketed or used — CAG noted, “idling in IRS data was high and was between 53 percent and 95 percent.” Data turnaround and processing time steadily increased during the period of the CAG review. For example, CAG said that data processing times were going up and concluded that efficiency was going in the wrong direction even for data that was being used. Will the new RSDP 2011 cure this situation? At least the NRSC made a series of pledges to improve in response to the CAG report. The new policy of opening additional data at a finer resolution could make more efficient use of the data being collected.

Gerry Oberst is a partner in the Hogan Lovells Brussels office.