The World Space Week celebrations organised by the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Sathish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) based in Sriharikota High Altitude Range (SHAR), Andhra Pradesh, at St. Joseph’s College has been drawing a large number of students and the public over the past two days.
The two-day event, held at the SAIL auditorium, ended on Wednesday. Besides pictorial exhibits of ISRO’s history and projects, the expo also featured a space model competition for school and college students and other contests related to space technology.
The event had an added emotional significance to the city due to the association of former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who graduated in Physics from St. Joseph’s College in the 1950s, and later became a missile technologist. “These celebrations are important because many doubts are raised in public about the economic viability and justification of ISRO’s projects,” P. Selvaraj, Deputy Director, Systems Reliability, SDSC SHAR, told ‘The Hindu.’ “Space technology has actually been a silent helper in many fields like tele-medicine, prosthetic technology, weather monitoring and satellite telecommunications, to name just a few,” he added.
The celebrations are being held for the first time in 17 destinations outside Sriharikota. Besides Tiruchi, the celebrations will be organised in educational institutions in Chennai, Kanchipuram and Coimbatore.
Models of different satellites, rockets, Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) and other replicas were on show at the SAIL hall. “Kindling the interest of the younger generation in science and technology is one way to solve societal problems,” said Mr. Selvaraj, who has been working for 33 years at ISRO.
The actual impact of space technology would be hard to quantify, he said. “Most of the technology that we take for granted such as electronic communication was first tested for space projects. Similarly, India has been able to drastically restrict the damage caused by natural disasters with the help of space weather monitoring systems. From losing thousands of lives in cyclones in the 1970s, we have now come to a situation where we can accurately predict the occurrence of the phenomenon and take preventive measures,” the scientist said. “This is the most positive outcome of our continuing interest in space technology.”
World Space Week (October 4 to 10), was instituted by United Nations in 2009. ‘Remote Sensing: Enabling Our Future’ is the theme for this year.
