11-18-2008, 02:36 AM
<b>Moonshot fires vision of Indian Google Earth</b>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->After conquering the moon, Indian scientists have their eyes trained on Google Earth.
Only weeks after the blast-off of India's first unmanned moon mission, the country's space agency plans to launch its own equivalent of Google Earth, the virtual globe programme, using its satellite network to create a high resolution web-based mapping system. The service, initially covering only India, will be offered at no cost to web users.
The Bangalore-based Indian Space Research Organisation hopes to have a prototype of Bhuvan - the Sanskrit for Earth - ready by the end of the month and is aiming for a public launch by March.
"We've created a lot of value added products out of satellite data of the Indian region," said V. Jayaraman, a research director at Isro, yesterday.
"We will introduce [Bhuvan] in phases. Over the next three to four months, the first lot [of map data] will come out and then more in a systematic manner."
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->After conquering the moon, Indian scientists have their eyes trained on Google Earth.
Only weeks after the blast-off of India's first unmanned moon mission, the country's space agency plans to launch its own equivalent of Google Earth, the virtual globe programme, using its satellite network to create a high resolution web-based mapping system. The service, initially covering only India, will be offered at no cost to web users.
The Bangalore-based Indian Space Research Organisation hopes to have a prototype of Bhuvan - the Sanskrit for Earth - ready by the end of the month and is aiming for a public launch by March.
"We've created a lot of value added products out of satellite data of the Indian region," said V. Jayaraman, a research director at Isro, yesterday.
"We will introduce [Bhuvan] in phases. Over the next three to four months, the first lot [of map data] will come out and then more in a systematic manner."
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