ISRO's historic launch: India joins elite space club of US and Russia

With ISRO’s historic launch of no less than 20 satellites in single mission, India has joined a select elite group of nations – US, Russia, Japan and Europe.

India has developed its own global navigation satellite system called the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS). Once it gets operational, India will join the select group of nations owing such system. IRNSS is similar to US’ GPS (global positioning system), Russia’s Glonass and Europe’s Galileo.

GPS and Glonass are fully functional, while Chinese and the Japanese systems offer regional coverage. Galileo is yet not operational.