New Delhi, Aug 31: As part of its contingency plan to tackle any eventuality arising out of the Y2K problem, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in Bangalore will depute select groups of scientists to man its ground control stations at Hassan and Peenya in Karnataka on December 31.ISRO teams involved in the launch of its satellites - Insat and Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) types - would monitor the systems at the two control stations, ISRO sources said.Another option in case of any unforeseen problem would be to place the satellites in `safe mode' in which certain critical systems on board including the payloads would be shut down but the satellites would continue to respond to ground commands.After settling the ground systems right, normal operation of the satellites could be started, the sources said.In case of power failure, the Hassan centre, from where all Insat satellites are controlled, could run for 48 hours with back-up power, they said.All Insat and IRS systems except a fewpayload data-handling software typical to IRS systems are compliant.Full compliance would be achieved by September-end and ISRO has issued guidelines to obtain compliance certificates for new procurements, says a report on the Y2K readiness status of the Department of Space (DoS) that was presented to the national Y2K action force here on Monday.The direct acquisition and quick-look browsing (DAQLB) software (using which an user selects a particular region and gets detailed remote sensing data) and the interactive information management system (to receive images from a particular sensor in a satellite) at the National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) in Hyderabad are yet to be made compliant, the sources said.DAQLB software would be replaced by a new version by the end of next month.Other satellite systems including the health monitoring systems, satellite mission systems and the embedded systems, which are the most crucial of all, have all been made compliant.Management Information Systems (MIS)would be made Y2K compliant soon, they said.ISRO has delivered Y2K compliant software to the ten international ground stations (IGS) which receive IRS data. The stations are currently testing the software.No external audits would be carried out as Y2K-related efforts were being coordinated by inter-centre expert groups of DoS, the sources said.Satellites, in general, do not follow the conventional way to maintain time. Instead, they count time secondwise starting from the moment they are powered.So the threat of Y2K is not to the satellites but the ground control systems and communication networks that maintain them, they said.
