Agriculture enters space age

Indian agriculture, flood control operations and environment management entered the space age on Thursday with the launch of RISAT-1.

Agriculture scientists and policy makers will be able to monitor moisture content, nature and health of the soil in real time thanks to the Radar Imaging Satellite-1 (RISAT-1) launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation from Sriharikota.

An extra large variant of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV C-19) built at a cost of Rs 120 crore injected RISAT-1 into a low earth orbit, 536 km away from the earth, 18 minutes after the launch.

The Rs 378-crore satellite is capable of providing real time data on a round-the-clock basis, irrespective of cloud, fog or any other natural hindrance. This is the first of its kind spacecraft to be built indigenously, said Dr K Radhakrishnan, chairman of ISRO.
RISAT-1 will emit radio signals and will record the echoes that return from the earth’s surface. “This will help in understanding moisture level of the earth and characteristics of the soil,” he added.

Dr Ajay Parida, executive director, MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai, said it would help agriculture scientists in advising farmers to select the ideal crop. “The sensors in the radar onboard RISAT-1 will help us with information about the characteristics of soil in each region. We can ask the farmers which crop to select to get the best yield,” he said.

According to Dr Radhakrishnan, RISAT would also help in finding out the health and rate of melt of the glaciers in the Himalayas. “This will help us to understand the intensity of the impact of climate change on our environment. We will be able to measure the size of the glaciers in the Himalayas to find out the quantity of water discharged to the Indian rivers because of the melting of glaciers,” he said.

Though RISAT-1 was scheduled to be launched in 2009, policy planners were forced to shelve the project to launch an Israeli built radar imaging satellite RISAT-2, capable of monitoring human movements in oceans, deserts and wild terrains.

Though the RISAT series have been portrayed as spy satellites, strategic experts like Dr Ajay Lele of theInstitute for Defence Studies and Analysis (IDSA) are skeptical about such claims.

“RISAT-1 will take 25 days for each revisit. The resolution of the images given by the spacecraft is nowhere near the quality of images given by satellites like Quickbird-2, the US satellite which identified the location of Osama bin Laden,” said Dr Lele.