Space and Human Development, Revised Edition

India’s space programme since its inception in the 1960s, has been driven by the desire to harness space technology for national development. Indigenous efforts to develop launch vehicles, spacecraft and their various sub-systems for communication, remote sensing and navigation purposes, spaceport to facilitate launches, and to build a network of mission centres for telemetry, tracking and command of satellites have been successfully undertaken over the last six decades. Important national programmes to use space infrastructure and data for developmental purposes in the field of natural resources survey/monitoring, improving weather forecasting, education, telemedicine, social empowerment, disaster monitoring and mitigation have been conceptualized and executed with enthusiasm. In addition, a few missions to the moon and Mars and an Astrosat mission to study stars have been launched successfully, and significant results have been obtained. The Indian space programme is held in high esteem internationally and India is one of the six countries/agencies in the world to have mastered different aspects of space technology and applications. Such an effort needs to be told to a larger audience through publications.