Indian Space Research Organisation will soon expose students from rural areas to data received from its remote-sensing satellites.
Its Chairman A.S. Kirankumar said on Monday that ISRO had already exposed students to a few small experiments and would like to further involve them on a large scale.
“We receive abundant data pertaining to various themes such as soil, water bodies and watershed development. We would like to collect samples of water bodies through students, especially those from rural areas, test them [the samples] in our laboratories and validate the data that we already have,” he told newspersons after inaugurating an exhibition on ‘Moon Mission’ at School Chandan in Laxmeshwar in Gadag district, 52 km from Hubballi.
“We already have a crowdsourcing application available on our website [ISRO’s geoportal bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in] which was put to use during a few recent natural calamities,” he said.
Mr. Kirankumar, who is also Secretary, Department of Space, earlier inaugurated and watched the working model of the ‘Moon Mission’ developed by rural students under the guidance of an ISRO scientist.
He said ISRO planned to launch six to seven satellites using its launch vehicles in a year’s time. This included Astrosat, the nation's first dedicated astronomy satellite, and three UK satellites on a commercial basis.
IRNSS-1D to fly on March 28
The rescheduled navigation satellite IRNSS-1D will now be launched on March 28, ISRO Chairman A.S. Kirankumar said on Monday.
The fourth in the seven-satellite Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System was put off due to a technical problem on March 4.
He said three IRNSS satellites were already in orbit. The launch will help to further strengthen the country's own GPS (Global Positioning System),” he said.
