India has launched its eighth navigation satellite, taking the country a step further to developing its own global positioning system and reduce its dependency on foreign navigation networks.
The IRNSS-1H satellite lifted off from the Sriharikota Space Centre in southern India on Thursday to join a constellation of seven other satellites in the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS).
IRNSS will help navigate the country's aerial and marine routes, as well as aid disaster management and vehicle tracking up to 1,500 kilometres around the mainland.
However, India lags behind the United States' GPS, Russia's GLONASS, Europe's Galileo and China's Beidou systems that have dozens of satellites to provide information across the globe.
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