'Heavy commercial satellites also could be considered on a case-by-case once we have the CSLA in place,' Nair pointed out.

Official sources hinted that the CSLA would be signed during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visit to Washington in November.

The state-run ISRO has two launch pads at Sriharikota, about 90 km north of Chennai, for putting communication and remote-sensing satellites in polar and geo-synchronous orbits on board PSLV or GSLV.

Allaying fears of global meltdown impacting space industry, Nair said the demand for communications, direct-to-home services, earth observation and scientific experiments had remained steady.

'We are finding that demand for communications, broadcasting and remote-sensing satellites or transponders is going (steady) much more than we have anticipated. Our target is how to bridge the demand-supply gap by putting more resources,' Nair noted.

ISRO plans to increase the number of launches per year making optimal utilisation of resources available at its spaceport.

'We have increased the number of launches from hardly one to three or four every year. We have already launched two satellites this year and two more, Ocenasat and GSAT-4, are due by this year-end.'

Clarifying that there was no end-user agreement with the US in space cooperation, Nair said half of ISRO's centres were not under the US sanctions anymore though some of them are still under the entity list requiring clearance by the US Commerce Department for using technologies and products manufactured by American firms.