all the processes. Many a times, there are more unknown variables than known
variables (signals received at multiple frequencies). Statistics and physicists have
found ways to overcome this limitation in many cases. With a fair amount of success,
scientists are able to map crops, detect forest fires, fish schools, sea surface
temperature, oceanic winds and waves, amount of water vapour and cloud water in
the atmospheric column, rain rate, snow-ice cover in polar regions, etc.
Sonali: Please tell us a little more on students’ participation in Satellite related
projects.
Dr. Sarkar: ISRO encourages Universities and Academia to propose new innovative
satellites. It has already launched several small satellites mainly for experimental
purposes. The proposed experiments include among other objectives Remote Sensing.
Jugnu, SRMSat and YOUTHSAT are some such examples. Jugnu satellite was
designed by IIT Kanpur under the guidance of ISRO. The SRMSat, developed by the
students and faculty of SRM University, attempts to address the problem of Global
warming and pollution levels in the atmosphere. YOUTHSAT is a joint Indo-Russian
stellar and atmospheric satellite mission with the participation of students from
Universities at graduate, post graduate levels and research scholars. YOUTHSAT
mission aims at investigation of the relationship between solar variability and
thermosphere-ionosphere changes. It carries both Indian and Russian sensors.
Together, they form a unique and comprehensive package of experiments for the
investigation of the composition, energetics and dynamics of earth’s upper
atmosphere.
Sonali: ISRO’s Mars mission has attracted everyone’s imagination. What is its
present status? Will it conduct remote sensing observations on Mars?
Dr. Sarkar: Mars has fired human imagination right from the beginning. The
conditions in Mars are believed to be hospitable since the planet is similar to Earth in
many ways. Mars and Earth have almost equal period of revolution around the axis.
The gravity of Mars is roughly one-third of Earth’s gravity and it has a thin
atmosphere with a pressure of 1% that of Earth. The atmosphere, water, ice and
geology interact with each other to produce a dynamic Martian environment as in
Earth. Mars has surface features reminiscent of both the impact craters of the Moon
and volcanoes, deserts and polar ice of Earth. It inspires visions of an approachable
world. For ages, humans have been speculating about life on Mars. But, the question,
that is to be still answered, is whether Mars has a biosphere or ever had an
environment in which life could have evolved and sustained.