ISRO to focus on sustainable development, healthcare

NEW DELHI - The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will focus on environment and sustainable development and healthcare using innovative technologies, its chairman K. Radhakrishnan said here Tuesday.

“The future thrust areas for ISRO will be in food and water security, weather and climate, environment and ecosystem, sustainable development, education and healthcare,” Radhakrishnan said.

He was speaking at the 11th Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) Silver Jubilee Lecture on ‘ISRO Saga Forward’.

Sharing the vision of ISRO for the next 20 years, he said: “We are working on GSAT 5P and RISAT-1, the satellite Aperture Radar, which enables the satellite to look at the earth, even in the presence of cloud cover”.

The chairman said ISRO’s Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology at Thiruvananthapuram has been training students in space technology.

Stating that the Indian space programme was society driven, Radhakrishnan said: “In the 1960s, India was beset with several problems, like illiteracy. Hence, the focus was on how communication satellites could be used to solve these immediate problems.”