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India launches five foreign satellites

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India launched a rocket carrying five foreign satellites Monday, as Premier Narendra Modi called on his country's scientists to develop their own satellite for South Asian nations.

The Indian Space Research Organization's Polar Launch Satelite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) took off at 9:52 am (0422 GMT) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on Sriharikota, an island off south-eastern India.

The satellites, including from Germany and France, were successfully placed in their prescribed orbits 660 kilometres above the earth, Modi said.

The main satellite on the rocket is the 714-kilogramme French earth-observation satellite SPOT-7. The others are the 14-kg AISAT of Germany, NLS7.1 (CAN-X4) and NLS7.2 (CAN-X5) from Canada, each weighing 15 kgs, and the 7-kg VELOX-1 of Singapore.

"Today's satellites are all from developed nations France, Canada, Germany and Singapore. Truly, this is a global endorsement of India's space capabilities," Modi said.

"Today, I ask our space community to take up the challenge of developing a SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) satellite that we can dedicate to our neighbourhood as a gift," he said.

This was the first space mission under Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party government, which came into power in May.

India has emerged as a significant player in the multibillion-dollar space launch market.

Monday's launch takes to 40 the number of foreign satellites India has put into orbit using its workhorse PSLV rocket since 1999, according to IANS news agency. Last February, India launched a satellite jointly built with France, carrying six foreign satellites.

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