Excelsior Correspondent
NEW DELHI, Aug 4: In yet another landmark, the Department of Space Technology / ISRO today added one more distinction to its series of recent achievements by concluding a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the union Ministry of Science & Technology.
The MoU was formally finalized with the signing of documents by senior scientists from ISRO and Science & Technology respectively in the presence of the concerned Ministers Dr Harshvardhan and Dr Jitendra Singh.
Speaking on the occasion, Dr Jitendra Singh said, even in the first six months of 2017, ISRO has achieved some of the world records including the launching of the first-ever South Asia Satellite by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, launching of highest-ever number of satellites in a single rocket, completion of 1,000 days in orbit of the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) and launch of GSLV-II with a load capacity of 4 ton satellite. Today’s MoU, he said, assumes importance because ISRO and Science & Technology are the two most important science-related departments in Government of India and the MoU signed today will herald a new era of synergism between the scientific research by these two scientific giants and also supplement their mutual efforts and achievements.
One of the major achievements in the last three years is, Dr Jitendra Singh said, that the applications of Space Technology have been widened and extended to every other field. Space Technology is now offering its services in virtually every Department and Ministry of the Government of India, he observed. Till date, he said, similar MoUs have already been accomplished with a number of Ministries, including Ministries of Agriculture and Railways. Not only this, ISRO is now not only playing an important role in disaster management, but also in the Modi Government’s “Smart City” programme, surveys for housing, roads and railway tracks and most importantly “Geo – MNREGA” to ensure transparency for the workers, he added.
With today’s MoU, Dr Jitendra Singh said, it will be possible to have synchronization of NavIC to Indian Standard Time (IST) thus enabling dissemination of precise time and timing information to the fraction of a nano-second. This will go a long way in keeping the timings of the Space Missions as well as detection of cyber-crime, etc, he added
Dr Harshvardhan congratulated ISRO and Science & Technology for coming together through this MoU. He said, National Physical Laboratory (NPL) of India, Delhi which is actively engaged in the present MoU, was established around the time of independence and therefore, it has a rich history which is similar to that of the ISRO. He said, the two giant Science related departments in the Government of India will help each other to grow at a faster pace.
Dr Harshvardhan referred to a number of accomplishments of Science & Technology during the last three years and complimented the Indian scientists for doing exemplary work in a highly focused manner.
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