Monday, December 22, 2008

Reaching for the moon

Dr Sule began his talk by explaining the need of space study for a developing country like India. "Though space projects are quite expensive, each nation aspires to utilise space technology to update modern means of communication such as TV and mobile services, to guard national security by keeping an eye on other nation's movements through satellites and to minutely study the moon with the help of three dimensional map and close pictures," he said.

Speaking about India's focused ventures to develop its own space technology for the past 50 years; Sule spoke about the first Indian satellite Aryabhatta that was triggered into the space on May 1975 with Russian help and knowhow. That was enough to boost the confidence of Indian scientists who started working on independent space missions that enabled them to launch the first indigenous satellite Rohini in 1980. In the past 28 years, Dr Sule added, India has helped seven nations to build or launch their satellites and launched 47 Indain satellites.
More for The Times of India HERE.