Speaking at a plenary session at the Centre-State Science Conclave held in Ahmedabad on Saturday, ISRO chairperson S Somanath urged states to look at “specific strengths” while imploring them to look at space-based solutions to meet governance needs. Noting that space development has been a “central (government led) agenda throughout”, Somanath stressed that the Department of Space “would like to bring down the gap that exists between the states and space”. Somanath also added that the department is “in the process of aggregating the demand from each of the states and building satellites accordingly.” Highlighting some specific avenues in space that states can cash in, Somanath listed sectors such as earth observation applications in the domain of forestry and fishing, mining, crop and water management, and disaster support and response, and governance applications in the domains of urban planning, geotagging, geofencing, asset monitoring, and decision support systems. Outlining the roadmap for 2047 in his presentation, among the objectives are outer space exploration in exoplanets, intelligent satellites, deep space exploration technologies and mass cargo transports, space technology based smart solutions, space mining and space habitation. Somanath also added that the “economy aspect of the space ecosystem is really promising for many of the new entrepreneurs in this domain.”
