ISRO Visit Organized By FAM

FAM had organized a field trip to SAC (Space Applications Centre) which is an integral part of ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization).Here we first went to the Vikram Sarabhai Space Exhibition (which is open to all people from 10:00 hrs to 13:00 hrs on weekdays). We were briefly introduced to remote sensing and the activities and achievements of ISRO in the same. Besides this we were also made aware about the vision of a man to benefit the society through technology means. Dr. Vikram Sarabhai had said “Technology is not an objective to be aimed at, but a tool for the benefit of the common man.” This has been the guiding philosophy of ISRO all through. After this we had the privilege of going inside ISRO and interacting with none other than Dr. R.R Navalgund, the director of SAC. He briefed us about the activities of not only SAC but also about the activities of ISRO in total. His presentation centered on the following points:
ISRO as an organization and its various departments (such as SAC, DECU, etc).
Activities of ISRO benefiting the people of our country (such as distress alert transmitter used by fishermen, etc).
Remote sensing applications (in fields such diverse as agriculture, ocean biology, metrology, oceanography and disaster management, etc).
Technology Development as different from Technology Management and the need for Technology Management.
Indigenous Technology Development.

Besides this the meeting was rounded off by an interactive Question and hour session in which many doubts of students and faculty of FAM were laid to rest by the astute answers of Dr. Navalgund. Some questions were pertaining to organizational structure of ISRO and formation of teams for projects, etc. Dr Pestonjee also raised a pertinent question pertaining to gender ratio of ISRO.

After the question hour session we had lunch and were taken around to see some of the labs of ISRO. First we saw the RAR or the real aperture radar which is widely used in communication. Besides this we also saw the SAR or the synthetic aperture radar which is an enhancement of the RAR. Finally we went to the antenna testing zone the technology for which has been provided by Agilent, Germany. After this we had our evening tea and snacks to round off a very educative field visit. I would like to thank on behalf of FAM all the officials of ISRO and especially Dr R.R Navalgund for their kind attention and making this visit a dream come true.

Sankalp Sharma [ MTM 1808]