Primarily, the strategy to develop Indian EO missions focused on indigenous efforts and in-house technology development. The mission parameters - especially sensors and platform of existing/planned EO missions have been defined purely based on the applications needs. The indigenous capability established in electro-optics and camera systems along with the strong base on the spacecraft subsystems and associated facilities saw India launching state-of-the art Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) and INSAT satellites. International cooperation in EO started with launching of the experimental Bhaskara missions and the early IRS satellites using then Soviet launchers. India also realizes that no single country can have all the needed sensors and satellites for meeting the user requirements. It is in this context, India used strategically the commercial and cooperative opportunities to make use of the complementary and supplementary information available from many global EO missions. The reception of Landsat, SPOT, ERS and Radarsat data in the past, and the planned reception in the future of satellites such as NPOESS exemplify this fact. Parallely, arrangements were made for the availability of IRS satellites data to global EO community through commercial agreements. Bilateral cooperation was considered as quite helpful in realizing the goals of some of the EO missions. The launching of MOS payload from DLR, Germany in IRS-P3 brought out not only the mutual benefits it can accrue to the concerned countries, but also for the entire global EO community. The recent ongoing arrangements with ESA for the exchange of IRS AWiFS data with that of ENVISAT is one more example. The inclusion of ROSA payload from ASI, Italy in the Oceansat 2 is yet another example of the usefulness of bilateral cooperation in EO. The ongoing bilateral cooperation involving ISRO and CNES, France to realize jointly Megha-Tropiques and the SARAL missions is an outstanding example of international cooperation, which has started as a bilateral cooperation, but extended to cover the interests of global earth science community. Currently, efforts are ongoing jointly with CNES and NASA to include Megha-Tropiques as part of the Global Precipitation Mission (GPM), making it a visible component of the GEOSS effort. Having reached near self-sufficiency in the launch vehicles, India also offers services to the interested agencies to launch their EO satellites as witnessed in the cases of BIRD, PROBA, KITSAT and TUBSAT. Besides the above, India's approach to regional and international cooperation through UN bodies such as UN-OOSA and UN ESCAP to foster cooperation in EO applications including in the disaster management also needs mention. India has also been sharing her rich experience, expertise and capacity building in using EO applications with developing countries through the UN-affiliated CSSTE-AP. The paper highlights India's strategic focus on bilateral, regional and international cooperation not only to realize the goals of having state-of-the-art EO missions and also to expand the benefits globally.
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