The Vista of Dawn - My Pensieve

Indian Space Program – The Way to Go

A couple of weeks ago, to be precise on the 22^nd of October, I was sitting at the café of my office, munching my lunch. There was an animated team at the table behind me, and they were discussing about the significant happening of that day – the launch of Chandrayaan-1 by the Indian Space Research Organization. A gentleman was asserting that such satellite missions are a waste of a common tax payer’s money and development ought to be focused on other essential areas. This set me thinking and my speech today has what the Indian Space Program has to offer.

Let us start with a brief history.

Indian Space Research Organization was founded a year after Intel (the place where I work now), that is in 1969, in a small church in Thumba in Kerala. If we think that’s where Indian Space Program began, we are wrong. Our feats in the field date back to 1802 when Tipu Sultan in Mysore war used defense rockets made of iron cases filled with black powder as propellant fuel. That rocket could go up to 2 miles. But this in fact motivated the British to develop a similar and more successful design called Congreve rocket. Well that was the innovation and risk taking story of Tipu.

Coming back to modern Space program in India, the first satellite Aryabhata was launched in 75. I’m not going to talk about the list of satellites or other statistics. Let’s rather turn our attention to what these satellites are trying to acheive. There are 2 categories of satellites. 1. Communication and 2. Remote Sensing

Comm. Satellites as most of us know have a quiet yet profound effect on our daily lives. From good old Doordhashan to the latest Navigator series, comm. Satellites have left their mark in our lives.

But what are these Remote Sensing satellites? Okay what is remote sensing? The simplest form of Remote Sensing could be you or I reading a book or taking a snap with a camera. I believe many of us here have sent their entries to the photography contest. In the same way, Remote Sensing is used to model and understand the dynamics of geo-activities like no other land based study has ever done. The power of synoptic coverage gives a totalitarian objective and helps draw a holistic picture.

All fine, but where do I see the applications of these satellites?

1. Agriculture – the long, strong back bone of our country. As we all know plants have chlorophyll and this chlorophyll has a specific reflectance which is picked by the remote sensing sensors aboard. This prediction is used to find the total production of a crop in the state, where we meet the demand etc. The crops having specific diseases are also being identified.

2. The direction and spread of forest fires and deforestation have been detected and checked using Remote Sensing satellites especially in Nagaland and other north-east districts.
3. Oceanology - Not just in land, the chlorophyll in ocean along with the temperatures is used to advice the fishermen about the exact location of fish population. The boats have GPS and their job is highly simplified. This has been implemented in many districts along the east coast.
4. Disaster prediction and mitigation - How else did US know when and where Katrina and Rita were going to strike and how many were to be relocated!!

5. And finally Mineral and rock mapping as is the case in Chandrayaan. How is it going to help the common man? As some of us might know, this latest ISRO baby is checking how useful the minerals and Helium found on moon would be. Helium is found in abundance and even if we are able to tap 2 tons from the moon, it could be sued to generate power supply to the entire country for a year.

Thus wrote Suganya @ 10:03 AM