The Indian village of Parvatapur receiving wireless connections through the Indian satellite, Inmarsat

By IOL South Asia Correspondent

NEW DELHI, December 27 (IslamOnline) - Space program in India has come of age. The country is now on the cutting edge of space technology and soon will be launching a satellite exclusively devoted to education.

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) decided to build a dedicated communication satellite for education. Disclosing the information to media persons here recently Dr Krishnamachari Kasturirangan, ISRO chairman, announced that the country would witness the launch of "Edusat" or Educational Satellite in 2005.

“Edusat - the 2000-kg satellite - would be the first in the world dedicated only for education, and would be launched by the indigenous geo-stationary satellite launch vehicle (GSLV) rocket in 2005,” Dr Kasturirangan said.

“The Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry has given the full go ahead for the satellite which will take around 30 months to launch,” he informed.

The satellite would be used in the domains of literacy, education training and other related areas. Effective steps have already been initiated towards the creation of the necessary ground instruction material and software generation by the HRD ministry, ISRO chairman said.

Explaining the utility of the satellite, Dr Kasturirangan said that it would beam educational programming around the country, including remote areas which are bereft of quality schools or colleges. “ It would be a unique system in the world,” he said.

Satellite communication technology is one of the greatest boons which science has provided to mankind. Through the use of this technology, development programs do not only reach distant areas but also remotest corners of the country. In effect, this unique technology has emerged as a strong tool to support development education.

In India literacy remains gravest and most important issue. The country is home to nearly one-third of the world’ s adult illiterates. According to the last census of 1991 300 million adults were found to be illiterate.

The annual population growth rate of 2.2 percent is being seen as one of the main reasons in neutralizing the literacy level so far achieved in the country. The result now being that nearly half of the adult population would be left behind in this era of knowledge revolution if effective steps are not urgently taken.

Acknowledging that the country’ s progress and prosperity would be hindered if firm steps to overcome the literacy problem were not taken, Indian space scientists started to explore the use of satellite communication to support development programs in a big way. Dr Vikram Sarabhai, the father of India’ s space program, provided the necessary impetus in this regard.

The urge for the application of advanced technologies led to the launch of Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) in 1975-76. The satellite-based interactive system has demonstrated its usefulness in training large number of people in the shortest possible time.

Through a number of experiments conducted so far countrymen have come to realize the wide applicability and utility of this system. The system has proved to be quite useful in different application areas such as training adult-education personnel, development functionaries in villages, elected Panchayati Raj (village self-rule) members, engineering and management students, banking staff, industrial workers… etc.

This powerful distance-education tool has also proved worthwhile in generating a feeling of togetherness among participants in different parts of the country by exposing them, simultaneously, to a common topic of interest.

“The launch of the Edusat would go a long way in making the countrymen knowledgeable and capable,” Dr Kasturirangan said.

Besides the launch of Edusat, the launch of the next generation communication satellite Insat 3-A would take place in February 2003. The launch would take place with the help of Ariane rocket from Korou in French Guyana. The satellite would be used for communication purposes, and would have 24 C-band transponders.

Another communication satellite Insat 3-E would also probably be launched in the second half of 2003. This satellite would have 24 transponders including C, extended-C and KU-band transponders (used for direct-to-home television broadcast), Dr Kasturirangan said.

The Indian remote sensing satellite, IRS-P6, would also be launched in the third quarter of 2003. The launch would take place using the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), ISRO chairman said.