Friday, January 22, 2016

[Editorial # 47] You are here : The Indian Express

[Following editorial has been published in The Indian Express on 22nd January 2016. Read through it and try to answer the questions that follow. Please do not copy and paste answers. The objective of this exercise is to get you in the groove of answer -writing. Try to write in your own words. Don't hesitate to write in a bulleted-format, if you are uncomfortable in writing in paragraph form.]

You are here

With the launch of the fifth payload of the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS), the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) is almost set to deploy a secure and nationally owned alternative to GPS, which will cover all of India and a zone about 1,500 km beyond the national borders. After two more launches, India will join the small group of nations with their own satellite navigation systems. The US GPS was the trailblazing system with a global footprint, followed by the Russian GLONASS and French DORIS. By 2020, the European Union’s Galileo and China’s BeiDou satellite arrays are expected to be globally deployed.

BeiDou is still a regional system, and the IRNSS marks India’s first, confident and very necessary step into this field. It will have two services, a public access system and an encrypted variant for the military. Indeed, while satellite navigation systems are generally celebrated for improving accuracy in conjunction with other services like GPS — DORIS can drill down to millimetric levels, which is valuable in the earth sciences — security will be the initial deliverable of the IRNSS. The need for secure communications is understood in our hacker-infested world and, by extension, so is the need to own communication satellites. However, the need to own secure positioning services should be equally obvious. A major geopolitical incident could render foreign GPS systems hard to access, or impossible to trust.


The extra accuracy which the IRNSS promises will assume significance for future developments like the Internet of Things, to revolutionise logistics and inventory management, for instance, and perhaps enhance telemetry services. The Isro is taking a significant step with the IRNSS, helping to future-proof the nation from the perspective of the security and accuracy of data. In an information-hungry world, it’s serving the national priority of generating and owning reliable data on the neighbourhood.

Question:

1. What is a Satellite Navigation System? What are various such systems functioning in the world currently? 

2. What is Global Positioning System? How does it work?

3. Do you have an access to GPS? Do you pay anything for accessing GPS? How do you avail GPS Services?

4. What are the application areas of Satellite Navigation System?

5. What is IRNSS? Why does India want to establish its own regional navigation system?

6. How are various Satellite Navigation Systems functioning in the world different from each other?

7. What is meant by Internet of Things? How is it going to impact humans' life on the planet?

8. "ISRO is an organisation which has proved its contribution towards nation building multiple number of times". Comment on the statement highlighting various milestones achieved by ISRO over the years. 

9 comments:

  1. 1. What is a Satellite Navigation System? What are various such systems functioning in the world currently?
    A. Satellite navigation sys is a series of satellites placed in particular orbits . These sat sends their orbital positions and time to the receiver on the earth. With these info the receiver can locate where his position on the earth. Currently there are only 2 in opertation GPS(US) and GLONASS(RUSSIA).

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  2. 2. What is Global Positioning System? How does it work?
    A. Global Positioning System is a navigation system developed by USA early in defence purpose. Later it was opened for civilian usage also.
    It consists of constellation of 24 satellites which sends 3 pieces of data to the receiveer on the earth.
    pseudorandom data piece:- to identify which satellite is it.
    ephermeris data piece: consists of imporant info about the position and time of sat.
    almanac data pieve: it tells where each sat should be at any time of the day.
    All these 3 data pieces are receive by the receiver(user), through which he can locate his position on the eartth. A min of 2 sat are needed to locate 2D view of the user. However 3D pictures can be send using min of 4 sat .

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  3. 3. Do you have an access to GPS? Do you pay anything for accessing GPS? How do you avail GPS Services?
    A. yes i do have access to GPS. It is for free to all the civilians. I avail the GPS services through mobile phon, google earth etc

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  4. 4. What are the application areas of Satellite Navigation System?
    A.SATNAV systems have a wide spectrum of services provided to all civilians.
    AIR:-
    general aviation sector,commercial aircraft etc.
    WATER:-
    shipping, security along the coasts, fishermen
    LAND:-
    for counter-terrorism opetations, traffic management,to know one's location, direction of travel, distance of travel.
    AGRICULTURE:-
    with remote sensing we can able to get its usage in crop patterns, land patterns,monsoon arrival
    INDUSTRY:-
    to setup industries at desirable place.
    pollution in the air in urban centers
    SERVICES:-
    positions of railways, airways etc

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  5. 5. What is IRNSS? Why does India want to establish its own regional navigation system?
    A. IRNSS is an acronym for Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System.It is Indian centric SATNAV system developed by ISRO as an alternative to GPS. The indegenous SATNAV system is crucial to reduce the overdependence on US's GPS. Moreover, the GPS products offers services to civilan purpose and much less to the military services. To overcome the loopholes in GPS where it's performance goes poor during the bad weather conditions, or in the areas of high buildings.Aiming to be superpower of this century she should have her own foothold in all fields. Hence it is the need of the hour to have our own regional navigation satellite system rather than depending on GPS.

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  6. 7. What is meant by Internet of Things? How is it going to impact humans' life on the planet?
    A. In 2008 the internet is being used more by electronic appliances than by the humans. Hence, it came to be known as Internet of things. Internet of Things is going to have a great impact on the society.
    SOCIAL IMPACT:
    1. there will be reduction in jobs. With the use of sensors in the appliances , the dependence on humans to get the work-done reduces. Hence the unemployment will be high.
    2. Everything will be automated. Hence it improves efficiency.
    3. It will have positive impact in the field of health. For instance, if any person faces heartattack in the midnight the devices used to sense the health parameters will send the information to the doctors and in no time the ambulance will be there at home. Here no third party intervention is needed.
    INDUSTRY:
    The application of this technology can reduce maintenance costs by up to 25%, cut unplanned outages by up to 50%, and extend the lives of machines by years.

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    Replies
    1. the catch lies in the ability to capture, analyze, and act on the data that can be collected.

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  7. 8. "ISRO is an organisation which has proved its contribution towards nation building multiple number of times". Comment on the statement highlighting various milestones achieved by ISRO over the years.
    A.Milestones in the Journey of ISRO:
    1960’s and 70’s programme were initiated for the development of indigenous launch vehicles,
    1980 - 1990’s was dedicated to the development of (PSLV) and (GSLV).
    1975:‘Aryabhatta’

    1979:SLV3
    1980, ‘Rohini’, was the first satellite placed into orbit by the Indian SLV-3.
    1993:PSLV was first launched
    2014:GSLV D5 successfully launched GSAT-14 into its intended orbit putting India into the elite ‘Cryo Club’.
    Satellites launched by ISRO for national benefit include:
    INSAT Series: telecommunication, broadcasting, metrology and search and rescue
    IRS Series:the largest Remote Sensing constellation for civilian use in operation in the entire world.
    RISAT Series: to obtain high resolution data.
    GSAT-16:direct-to-home (DTH) television broadcast
    Kalpna-1: ISRO's dedicated Metrological satellite
    IRNSS Series: independent regional satellite system
    2008:Chandrayan-1
    2013: Mangalyan
    2015:ASTROSAT

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