Wednesday, December 29 2004 20:02 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Bangalore: The launch of Edusat in the first operational flight of India's own launch vehicle GSLV marked high point of the country's space programme during 2004, with the year also witnessing the inauguration of maiden cluster of four satellite-based village resource centres (VRCs).

The 1950 kg Edusat, the country's first thematic satellite dedicated to education services, was launched by GSLV (Geo-synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle) on September 20.

According to Bangalore-headquartered Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the successful launch was an important land-mark and it demonstrated the reliability of the vehicle.

The space agency also sees the inauguration of the first cluster of VRCs in Tamil Nadu by Prime Minister in October and further expansion of telemedicine network as reiteration of India's commitment to use space technology for societal applications.

VRC is a totally interactive VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal) based network to provide space-enabled information and a variety of services like tele-education, telemedicine, online decision support, interactive farmers' advisory services, tele-fishery, e-governance services, weather services and water management.

VRCs will also provide connectivity to speciality hospitals thus bringing the services of expert doctors closer to the villages, say ISRO scientists.

The year also saw the Indo-US conference on space science, applications and commerce aimed at strengthening and expanding cooperation between the two countries; the meet in June, attended by 200 delegates from the US, culminated with the issue of a vision statement for enhanced bilateral Co-operation.

ISRO signed a memorandum of understanding with the French space agency CNES for the development and launch of an atmospheric satellite Megha-Tropiques for investigating the contribution of the water cycle in the tropical atmosphere to climate dynamics.

India will build the Megha-Tropiques spacecraft and also launch it using its PSLV as well as maintain the satellite in orbit, receive, process and distribute the scientific data from it.

While two of the scientific instruments for the satellite slated for 2008-09 launch will be designed and built by CNES, the third will be jointly built by ISRO and CNES.

ISRO also conducted airdrop test of space-capsule recovery experiment (SRE) from Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC), Sriharikota, with an intention for demonstrating the technology to recover a 500 kg orbiting space capsule that would be launched by PSLV in the second half of next year.

A month-long campaign on atmospheric aerosols during which vehicle equipped with sophisticated instruments travelled 6,000 km in south India to measure physical, chemical and optical properties of aerosols and trace gases along road corridors, was held.