India's Space Agency:Boeing Ends Satellite Collaboration

BANGALORE, India (AP)--India's space agency said Friday that a subsidiary of Boeing Co. (BA) has canceled an agreement to help produce communication satellites.

The Indian Space Research Organization, or ISRO, said Boeing Satellite Systems pulled out after deciding to withdraw from the business of producing light satellites for which the agreement had been signed a year ago.

"We are now looking for a different partner but that's going to take some time," G. Madhavan Nair, ISRO chairman said at the agency's headquarters in southern Bangalore city.

The U.S. government, in a bid to step up high technology cooperation with India, had granted an export license for a Boeing proposal to jointly produce and market the satellites with ISRO - India's equivalent of NASA - in June 2004.

Under the deal, Boeing Satellite was to provide transponders and other instruments to ISRO to help design newer versions of India's INSAT communication satellites. The partners had hoped to start selling them to other countries in 2006.

An INSAT satellite typically weighs about 4,400 pounds and hovers nearly 22,500 miles above the Earth. It provides telephone communications, Internet access and television broadcasting.

"It is this class of satellites that Boeing decided to exit," Nair said.

The deal had been reached even as ISRO and many of its subsidiaries remained under the United States' export restriction list. American companies must obtain an export license before selling high technology items.

Economic sanctions were imposed by the United States on India after its nuclear tests in 1998, but most have been lifted. ISRO has also been removed from the list.

On the Net:

Boeing Satellite: http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/bss/flash.html

ISRO: http://www.isro.org

(END) Dow Jones Newswire"

Posted to the site on 16th September 2005