One of the significant milestones of Indian remote sensing technology in development of one meter spatial resolution cameras equipped in the Technology Experimental Satellite launched in space on October 22 was achieved in the backyard of Indian Space Research Organisation Ahmedabad.

These high resolution imagery cameras of one meter resolution, which have a specific military and civilian application, can take photograph of the one square meter area from the sky. It gives an unprecedented advantage to Indian urban planners and the military establishments. India is the only country after the US to have such cameras, said ISRO officials.

This process which seemed impossible just a few years back was achieved by the hard work of 700 to 800 scientists of the Space Application Centre of ISRO Ahmedabad.

The SAC not only developed the cameras but is also developing software for processing of data acquired from the high-resolution satellite imagery and working on its application part.

Chairman of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing Dr. Sailesh Nayak told that India stands second to none in the remote sensing technology.

Explaining working of the one-meter resolution camera developed by SAC, Dr. Nayak said it takes series of images of a square meter area of the land from the sky in scheduled orbit of a satellite. The data of images have to be processed to make the picture clear, he added.

Dr. Nayak said "The SAC scientists are at present busy in development of software for processing of data from one square meter images. The most important aspect is how to interpret the data provided by the satellite imagery."

Speaking about the application, he said that they have not started using high-resolution cameras so far. The working of cameras fitted in TES is being monitored by the core group of ISRO, he added.

The chairman denied giving details of how these cameras were developed. However, speaking about the application part he said that all the technology can be used for civilian as well as military purpose.

Talking about the benefit, he said that data from such cameras would help elicit information at micro level and will help gather information, which was till now being gathered by conventional methods which are time consuming and sometimes lack scientific basis.

"The areas, which will be benefited, are urban planning; coastal studies terrain evolution, civil engineering application and of course military field." he added

Speaking about the overall capacity of remote sensing director of SAC Dr. Nayak said India has the distinction of having in orbit remote sensing satellites with spatial resolutions ranging from one km to one m providing flexibility for applications in diverse fields. At present, the national projects related to agriculture, forestry, environment, coastal zone management, ground water targeting and watershed development are being executed using data from remote sensing satellites.

Republished from Asian Age