ROURKELA: IT is never too late to achieve success which is different from what others have done so far, said Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman A S Kiran Kumar on Saturday. He cited India’s success in entering the Mars orbit in its maiden attempt and becoming the fourth country to send a spacecraft to the red planet.
Addressing the 14th Convocation of National Institute of Technology-Rourkela (NIT-R) as chief guest, the ISRO chief told the young technocrats, “You can also innovate on technologies and bring in solutions to problems affecting the country.”
“The navigation system India has adopted is frugal seven satellites constellation providing solutions to India and its surroundings in comparison to 24 to 32 satellites adopted by the US, Russia, China or Europe”, he said.
Kumar advised the host institute to adopt 100 villages to ensure that the benefits of technology reach rural population. Using ISRO’s water surface map, ways should be explored to provide alternative source of livelihood to the tribal people in inland fisheries which have tremendous opportunities, he said. “We have a huge number of communication and navigation satellites whose signals can be used for bringing in new amount of applications. All these areas have tremendous opportunities for the institution,” he added.
As trade and commerce grows at a phenomenal rate at the cost of environment, the ISRO chief mooted sustainable development using environment-friendly technologies which should be efficient and adaptable to local conditions.
Convocation Chairman and Director, IIT-Bhubaneswar, Prof RV Raja Kumar and NIT-R Director Prof Animesh Biswas were present. “There are expansions and innovations on all fronts. The day is not far when we will boast of 10,000 students and research scholars, 1,000 faculty members and 1,200-odd non-faculty staff in above 25 departments,” said Prof Biswas. On the occasion, 1,405 degrees were handed over to the students.