Now, map your earth with ISRO's Bhuvan

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Bhuvan, the revolutionary earth mapping tool from ISRO was launched today by Minister of State in the PMO Prithviraj Chavan.

The Bhuvan toolbar, which can be downloaded from http://bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in/, enables the common man to view sharper pictures of any part of the world on their personal computer using satellite images.

Touted as ISRO's own version of Google Earth, the web-based tool allows users to have a closer look at any part of the subcontinent barring sensitive locations such as military and nuclear installations.

Launching the beta version of the geoportal at a day-long workshop of the Astronautical Society of India on '21st Century Challenges in Space - Indian Context', the minister said that India undertook development of satellites, launch vehicles and associated ground segment indigenously in a progressive manner, with the emphasis on self-reliance. He termed Bhuvan as “ a powerful tool’.

Citing ISRO’s programmes such as Remote Sensing for natural resources, Disaster management, Tele-education, Tele-medicine and Village Resource Centres (VRS) as rich examples, he observed that today, India’s core competence in space was its ability to conceive, design, build and operate complex space systems and to use them in various aspects of national development.

The workshop has been organized by Astronautical Society of India, ASI, headed by Dr. G Madhavan Nair who is also Chairman, ISRO/ Secretary, Department of Space, to commemorate the birth anniversary of Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, the father of the Indian Space Programme.

Referring Chadrayaan as ‘a fine example of culmination of all space technologies” and “one of the most prestigious and successful missions of the Indian Space programmes”, Chavan said that innovations in space communications and Earth Observations will be used to achieve faster delivery of information to remote areas and finer observation of planet earth.

Madhavan Nair said that  ISRO has begun preparations for sending a spacecraft to Mars within the next six years. Government has sanctioned seed money of Rs 10 crore to carry out various studies on experiments to be conducted, route of the mission and other related details necessary to scale the new frontier, he said.