MUMBAI : Asian giants India and China have reached a ground-breaking agreement to promote cooperation in civil nuclear energy. Maybe they should now consider extending that cooperation to space exploration as well.

Four months ago, the launch of India's first commercial communications satellite from home soil ended in failure after the the three-stage 414-tonne launch vehicle GSLV-F02 veered off course soon after lift-off, and ultimately crashed into the Bay of Bengal. The GSLV-F02 was carrying the state-of-the-art communication satellite Insat-4C, the second satellite in the Insat-4 series.

China, meanwhile, suffered a setback of a different sort after its first direct-to-home broadcasting satellite, failed less than 10 days after launch, the South China Morning Post reported. While the launch of SinoSat-2, China's first domestically made satellite, went off smoothly, the satellite's solar panel faily shortly after it went into orbit, the newspaper reported, quoting sources familiar with the situation. The satellite has suffered a serious power failure and appeared beyond repair, the report added.

At the time of launch, the Chinese government-run Xinhua News Agency had said SinoSat-2 would help to provide a broader coverage of TV signals and allow more digital and live broadcast TV services across the country.

SinoSat-2 had been hyped as a broadcaster of digital television signals to China's rural areas with no access to cable, and was meant to offer services directly to some 100 million households.