Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has renewed a five-year contract with EADS Astrium, Europe's leading satellite system specialist, for joint marketing of satellites.

Announcing this during the visit of French President Nicolas Sarkozy to the ISRO Satellite Centre (ISAC), ISRO Chairman K Radhakrishnan said the strategic alliance was signed between EADS Astrium and ISRO in 2005.

Under this, ISRO's commercial arm, Antrix Corporation, and EADS Astrium, the wholly-owned subsidiary of EADS SPACE, will jointly address the commercial market for communications satellites with payload power below 4 Kw and a launch mass in the range of two to three tonnes.

Satellites in this segment are a sizeable and stable part of the market.

Radhakrishnan said ISRO had signed an agreement with Arianespace for two more satellite launches.

"We have signed commercial agreements with Arianespace for two more launches a euros " GSAT-8 in 2011 and GSAT-10 in 2012,," he said. The launch cost of these two satellites is estimated about Rs 500 crore."

Arianespace, the European launcher which operates from France's territory of Atlantic coast in South America, has so far launched 12 Indian satellites.