India to triple satellites its three years: ISRO chairman

Indian Space Research Organisation Chairman V.Narayanan said India will increase the number of satellites in orbit three times from the present 56 in three years.

Speaking at the 21st convocation of SRM Institute of Science and Technology, he said “By 2040, India will match all developed countries in terms of all capabilities of the space programme. In 1963, a tiny rocket was donated by the USA and we launched it. That was the beginning of the Indian space programme. Last week, we launched the NISAR satellite, the costliest satellite ever built in the world. It was placed in orbit precisely by an Indian launcher,” he said.

“In another couple of months, we are going to launch a 6500 kg communication satellite built by the U.S.A. using our own launcher. A country which did not have satellite technology 50 years back, we have launched 433 satellites from 34 countries using our launch vehicle,” he said.

Maharashtra Governor C.P.Radhakrishnan stressed the need for contribution in technology innovation by graduates from the country by learning another foreign language other than English, including French and German. “We cannot manage with English in Germany. We cannot manage with English in France. Learning a language will give you a lot of advantages.”

SRM Institute of Science and Technology Founder Chancellor T.R.Paarivendhar presided over the convocation. M.Ravichandran, Secretary, Union Ministry of Earth Sciences, said India will put in place an earthquake early warning system in 2047. He stressed the need for contribution from engineering graduates to explore new horizons in aspects such as weather management and take measures to increase the ocean’s contribution to GDP from 4%, doubling the contribution to shipping, energy from the ocean, food from the ocean, water from the ocean, health from the ocean and climate change mitigation in a sustainable manner.