Happy New Year 2011

Think of joy,

Forget the fear,

Keep the smile,

Leave the tear,

Hold the laugh,

Leave the pain,

Be joyous,

Coz it’s New Year!

Wishing You All A very Happy and Prosperous New Year 2011

Marshall Space Flight Center

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center which develops key transportation and propulsion technologies. The George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) is the U.S. government's civilian rocketry and spacecraft propulsion research center

Department of Space to launch 30 satellites

The Department of Space plans to launch “not less than 30 satellites in the next decade. These include a series of resourcesat, cartosat, ocean and atmospheric satellites, National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) Director V. Jayaraman told reporters on the sidelines of a conference on Karnataka Geo-Spatial Database on Tuesday.

The Hyderabad-based NRSC, which comes under the Department of Space, acquires processes and disseminates remote sensing data for applications and disaster management.

“We will launch Resourcesat-2 in early February or January-end. It will be a replacement satellite for Resourcesat-1, which gives us 5.8 metres, 70 km multi-spectral data for the first time,” Dr. Jayaraman said.

An “integrated multi-mission ground segment” would be set up in Hyderabad, which would enable the Indian Space Research Organisation to receive satellite data and to supply 1000 space products every day directly to the users.

Emergency products:

At present, the NRSC needed four to five days to deliver space products. With the new ground segment, the centre would be able to do that within 12 hours and even supply “emergency products” within an hour of receiving the data. The ground segment would be set up at a cost of around Rs. 40 crore and was expected to be operational by June 2011.

Delivering the keynote address at the conference, Dr. Jayaraman said experts in GIS and remote sensing must tap into the power of cloud computing. GIS, he added, must be made simple, friendly and easy-to-use.