ISRO’s marketing arm Antrix’s homepage temporarily ‘hacked’

The home page of the Antrix website was replaced with parts of an article talking about 300 kids from Cape Town getting American Major League jerseys at cheap prices from China.

On Friday, ISRO announced the successful launch of its PSLV C 28 mission, which launched three DMC3 satellites and two smaller satellites weighing a total of 1440 kg at liftoff. “It is a case of Pharma hacking and not manual hacking”, he said.

The space agency’s own website (www.isro.gov.in) and its other associated sites are safe and are accessible.

The space agency is planning to send upwards of 10 satellites every year starting from this year.

Among the satellite launches, Kitsat (Korea), Tubsat (DLR – Germany), BIRD (DLR – Germany), PROBA (Verhaert, Belgium) aboard the ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) are some. “The idea is to expand our space programmes and drive capacity building to meet with demand”, Kiran Kumar, who is on a visit to Vikram Sarabhai Research Centre (VSSC) here, said today. At Akkulam, the place nearby Thiruvananthapuram, AS Kiran Kumar said, “By December next year, we are expecting to launch this (Saarc) satellite”.

The Chandrayan II was progressing satisfactorily and was expected to be launched in 2018, the chairman said. Spectrum finalisation for the satellite is being worked out, he said. “We plan to make the next launch in August”, Kiran Kumar said.

The other planned launches this year are AstroSat, IRNSS 1E, IRNSS 1F, IRNSS 1G and GSAT 15. “The demo vehicle will travel around 90 kms”, he said.

“The home page of the Antrix Corporation Limited website seems to have been hacked and we have already intimated this to the officials (of Antrix) who are dealing with the problem”, a senior ISRO official said.