India's space agency, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), will launch two Russian satellites during 2006-08 as part of its program for international cooperation on a commercial basis.

ISRO Chief G. Madhavan Nair said in Bangalore, the capital city of Karnataka, on Monday that his agency had a firm contract with Russia to launch the satellites to restore the Glonass navigation network.

The global navigation satellite system, or Glonass, is an international project involving 30 countries.

Of the 24 satellites in the constellation, 11 satellites have already been placed in geo-stationary orbit and the rest are to be launched in coming years.

The Russian-built satellites will be launched from India's Satish Dhawan Space Center at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh state, using an Indian rocket, the geo-synchronous satellite launch vehicle (GSLV), between 2006 and 2008.

"We have agreed to cooperate with Russia in the Glonass project, which has two objectives. The first is to launch the Russian-built spacecraft using the GSLV and to put another satellite in the polar orbit," Nair said on the sidelines of twin conferences here on planetary exploration and space laws.

"We have entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Russian space agency Soyuz to jointly build an Indo-Russian spacecraft for research from a polar orbit.

"This satellite will also be launched from Sriharikota using the polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV)," he said.

Source: Xinhua