ISRO's national interest bullshit
For data and other objects, like images and videos, it places in the public domain, the Indian government attaches the GODL license – short for ‘government open data license’. The terms of this licens…
Indian Space Research Organisation
63 posts
Reading fog data from INSAT 3DR
At 7.57 am today, the India Meteorological Department's Twitter handle posted this lovely image of fog over North India on January 21, as captured by the INSAT 3DR satellite. However, it didn'…
Being on the NSI podcast
Narayan Prasad, the CEO of SatSearch, hosts a popular podcast called NewSpace India. Every episode, he hosts one person and they talk about something related to the Indian and international space prog…
The virtues and vices of reestablishing contact with Vikram
There was a PTI report yesterday that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is still trying to reestablish contact with the Vikram lander of the Chandrayaan 2 mission. The lander had crashed o…
The mission that was 110% successful
Caution: Satire. On October 2, Kailash S., the chairman of the Indian Wonderful Research Organisation (IWRO), announced that the Moonyaan mission had become a 110% success. At an impromptu press conf…
Review: 'Mission Mangal' (2019)
This review assumes Tanul Thakur’s review as a preamble. There's the argument that ISRO isn't doing much by way of public outreach and trust in the media is at a low, and for many people – mo…
Discovering Vikram Sarabhai
I just read through a collection of Vikram Sarabhai's important speeches and papers compiled by members of the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad, to pick a suitable portion to excerpt…
An award that isn't
ISRO just put out a call for a one-time space journalism award, named for Vikram Sarabhai, with a cash prize of Rs 5 lakh. Here's the doc with all the details. Pay attention to (4), where it says…
Why covering ISRO is a pain
The following is a bulleted list of reasons why covering developments on the Indian spaceflight programme can be nerve-wracking. * ISRO does not have a media engagement policy that lays out when it…
Firstpost's selfish journalism
I'm sure you've heard of the concept of false balance, which is based on the conviction that there are two sides to every story even when there aren't or when it's not clear to anyone…
Why are we going to the Moon again?
At 2:51 am on July 15, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will launch its Chandrayaan 2 mission on board a GSLV Mk III rocket from its spaceport in Sriharikota. The rocket will place its pa…
Solutions looking for problems
There’s been a glut of ‘science projects’ that seem to be divorced from their non-technical aspects even when the latter are equally, if not more, important – or maybe it is just a case of these probl…