I've been to India's Satish Dhawan Space Centre for work. They do a <i>lot</i> with the resources they have been given.<p>The on-base museum exhibits show how their weather and communications satellites help India with its national development goals (agriculture, connecting the countryside, etc.).<p>Space is hard. India has very reliable rocket (PSLV) that gets satellites to orbit. They have also successfully sent a probe to Mars, which is a real accomplishment for any space program. I was living in China at the time, and the Chinese felt a bit shown up by what they consider to be a less developed economy.
Primary payload of this launch was ScatSat-1 satellite[1]. ScatSat-1 contains a scatterometer to monitor weather conditions over ocean (weather forecasting, cyclone prediction etc.). ScatSat-1 data can predict/reveal bad weather conditions as early as five days before the actual bad weather conditions occur.<p>ScatSat-1 satellite is a stopgap replacement for OCSCAT payload, which stopped functioning recently, onboard Oceansat-2 satellite.<p>ISRO's Oceansat-2 data is widely used by various weather and space agencies such as ESA, NOAA, NASA/JPL[2][3][4] etc.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCATSAT-1" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCATSAT-1</a><p>[2] <a href="https://earth.esa.int/web/guest/missions/3rd-party-missions/current-missions/oceansat-2" rel="nofollow">https://earth.esa.int/web/guest/missions/3rd-party-missions/...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.wmo-sat.info/oscar/satellites/view/344" rel="nofollow">https://www.wmo-sat.info/oscar/satellites/view/344</a><p>[4] <a href="https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/dataset/OS2_OSCAT_LEVEL_2B_OWV_COMP_12_V2" rel="nofollow">https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/dataset/OS2_OSCAT_LEVEL_2B_OWV_C...</a>
"Engineers repurposed spare parts from previous satellites to construct ScatSat, according to the Indian Space Research Organization"<p>This only happens in India. I am saying this in a good way.<p>Source: <a href="https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/09/26/india-declares-success-on-pslvs-most-complex-mission/" rel="nofollow">https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/09/26/india-declares-success...</a>
Google linked link which is not subject to paywall: <a href="http://bit.ly/2cGd7E7" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/2cGd7E7</a>
India is a vigorous democracy that has sent an orbiter to Mars. Yet its children are more likely to starve than children in far poorer nations in Africa. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/opinion/half-these-kids-are-stunted.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/opinion/half-these-kids-ar...</a>