India's space agency is sharpening its focus on manned spaceflight, lunar exploration and planetary probes - and is considering a Moon mission.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is also planning a reusable transport system to reduce the cost of access to space. The Indian space agency is also aiming for new-generation remote-sensing satellites with hyper-spectral imaging capability, and advanced communications spacecraft with higher bandwidth and wider coverage.
ISRO has denied suggestions that its manned-flight programme is a reaction to China's success in human space missions. But the view that India should not lag behind its neighbour has currency.
India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) has launched 44 satellites so far
For India's first manned mission - scheduled for 2016 - ISRO will set up new facilities and develop a host of technologies. A third launchpad is to be added at Sriharikota spaceport on India's eastern coast. And in a tie-up with the Institute of Aviation Medicine, ISRO plans to set up an astronaut training facility at Bangalore by 2013.
After a first phase of technology development - relating, in part, to re-entry - the focus will shift to the man-rated space capsule. Russia will help India develop a manned capsule based on Soyuz technology, under an agreement signed in 2008.
India hopes to be the fourth country, after the USA, Russia and China, to send astronauts into space.
Its manned mission and plans for planetary exploration arguably represent a dilution of the Indian space programme's original philosophy. In the late 1960s, Dr Vikram Sarabhai, architect of the Indian space programme, asserted: "We do not have the fantasy of competing with the economically advanced nations in the exploration of the Moon or planets or manned flights. But... we must be second to none in the application of advanced technologies to the real problems of man and society which we find in our country."
ISRO insists it is committed to diffusing the fruits of space technology into the mainstream of national development. Two projects that are intended to be socially beneficial - the Village Resources Centre and the Telemedicine service - are based on Indian National Satellite System (INSAT) communications and Indian Remote-Sensing (IRS) earth-observation constellations operated by ISRO.
Established in 1983, INSAT is the Asia-Pacific region's largest domestic communications satellite system, involving 11 satellites. The IRS system, meanwhile, is one of the largest constellations of remote-sensing satellites in operation in the world, with 10 satellites.
Geopolitical compulsions have prodded ISRO to take up development of India's fully fledged navigation satellite constellation and end the country's dependence on global systems such as GPS Navstar. The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS), comprising seven satellites, is expected to be fully operational by 2014.
As part of its "Vision 2025" strategy, ISRO plans to explore Mars, Venus and the asteroid belt. The mini research satellite Aditya will be launched in 2012, to study the solar corona. Launch of the Mars orbiter - designed to study the chemical attributes of the Martian atmosphere, and the planet's subsoil and terrain - will follow after 2015. ISRO chairman K Radhakrishnan says the organisation has been able to achieve a lot on a shoestring. The agency's budget for 2009-10 was around $1.3 billion, its highest ever.
India's first Moon mission, Chandrayaan-1, launched in 2008 to search for water on the lunar surface. The follow-on Chandrayaan-II mission, involving a lander and rover, will launch in 2013 by means of the three-stage Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV). The aim is to collect samples of lunar soil and conduct in-situ chemical and mineralogical studies. The lander will be provided by Russia, but the orbiter and rover are being built by ISRO, says the Indian agency.
However, India continues to lag behind in boosting its launch capability. ISRO is halfway through plugging the defects in the home-grown cryogenic stage,