NASA seeks India's help

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NASA seeks Indian help in Earth sciences study

NASA seeks Indian help in Earth sciences study

IANS

 

Monday, January 06, 2003

 

The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is

seeking India's help to study and decipher the massive amounts of

data on earth sciences from a confluence of satellites.

 

 

 

BANGALORE: Numerous U.S. satellites studying changes in the Earth,

oceans and atmosphere have been pumping in huge quantities of data.

 

"The most difficult thing we find is understanding the meaning of the

data for meteorological prediction. This is one major area in which

India's experts can help NASA," says Jim Dodge, programme director of

earth sciences at the U.S. space agency.

 

Delivering a "vision" talk at the space summit organised as a part of

the 90th Indian Science Congress here, Dodge pointedly mentioned the

expertise of Indians in meteorology, mathematics, physics and other

disciplines for the study of data from satellites.

 

"We are right now swimming with new data that could predict the

future. Our focus, like the Indian space programme, is also on

meeting the societal needs in the next two decades," Dodge added.

 

"The drivers are no more technology, but scientific. How the global

Earth system is changing and how the Earth responds to natural and

human-induced changes are some questions."

 

The urgency in doing the "massive job of distilling data" emanates

from the fact that there is a demand for providing the information on

a personal computer.

 

"The challenge for the future is really analysis of data," Dodge said.

 

But it is not only the U.S. that is seeking India's cooperation in

space technology and applications. China, Thailand, Malaysia and the

European Space Agency are all looking for strengthening their ties

with India.

 

"We have a memorandum of understanding with India. But we are still

in the exploratory stage. We don't know where it will be headed

finally," an official of the Chinese space agency told IANS.

 

"We have the capacity to launch big satellites, but India has

expertise in remote sensing and Earth sciences."

 

Suvit Vibulshresth of Thailand's Geo-Informatics and Space Technology

Development Agency (GISTDA) told the space summit: "Thailand is

already receiving images from the Indian remote sensing satellite.

And we are awaiting the launch of Cartosat to receive higher density

images. We also hope India can help us build a small satellite.

 

Added Antonio Rodata, director of the European Space Agency: "We have

been cooperating with India for 25 years. We are now having talks for

cooperation in disaster management."

 

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