YOUR GO-TO GUIDE TO NavIC

INDIA'S OWN SATELLITE BASED NAVIGATION SYSTEM

What is NavIC?

The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS), with an operational name of NavIC (acronym for NAV I Cigation with ndian onstellation), as the name suggests, is an independent Regional Navigation Satellite System that has been developed by ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) to provide accurate position information service to users in India as well as the region extending up to 1,500 km from India's boundary, which is also called primary service area.

To put it simply, NavIC is India's own satellite-based navigation system, which is similar to USA's GPS (Global Positioning System) or Russia's GLONASS (GLObal NAvigation Satellite System), but its coverage is limited to India. At the moment, NAVIC comprises a constellation of seven IRNSS satellites. Three of the seven satellites in constellation are located in geostationary orbit (GEO), i.e., approximately 36,000 km above the earth surface, and four satellites are in inclined geosynchronous orbit (IGSO).

Why it has been built?

The NavIC system was developed partly because access to foreign government-controlled global navigation satellite systems is not guaranteed in hostile situations, as happened to the Indian military in 1999 when it was dependent on the American Global Positioning System (GPS) during the Kargil War. And, the U.S. government denied to provide the GPS information that time.

Though a need for an indigenous satellite navigation system was felt earlier, the Kargil experience made the nation realize its importance. Since then, India had been working on an indigenous satellite system for location services.