Europe, for the first time, is leading the global monitoring aspect of space
FAISALABAD: The Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, in 1957. Since then, about 6,600 satellites from more than 40 countries have been launched. Freshly, on March 7, the European Space Agency (ESA) base at Kourou, French Guiana, was launched into space, thought of as one of the world’s most ambitious and innovative Earth observation programmes. It is a satellite with improved colour gradation and capturing capabilities called Sentinel 2B. This will help observers study the health of crops and forests, growth of cities and the effects of altering land usage and global warming. Sentinel 2B will also be used to examine natural disasters and further humanitarian relief efforts globally.
Europe, for the first time, is leading the global monitoring aspect of space to which nothing is comparable in America, Japan, Russia and India. As of February 2017, Indian Space and Research Organisation has launched 225 satellites, including 180 foreign ones using indigenously developed launch vehicles like SLV, ASLV, PSLV and GSLV. In Pakistan, the Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (Suparco) is a space agency responsible for the nation’s public and civil space programme and for aeronautics and aerospace research. Indeed, Suparco is playing its pivotal role in the development of state policy concepts in the sphere of research and peaceful uses of space, as well as in the interests of national security. However, there is a dire need of revitalisation in Suparco’s research programme so that it can, too, send satellites from its soil.
Engr Mansoor Ahmed
Published in The Express Tribune, March 21st, 2017.
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