FUTURE PERSPECTIVES OF REMOTE-SENSING

Three Indian remote sensing satellites, IRS-1A, 1B and P2, are providi ng data to the global community in a continuous manner, With the launc h of IRS-1C, in December 1995, user services have been significantly e nhanced, Presently, plans are onway to define the continuity to these missions, Towards this, a detailed assessment of the earth observation needs has been made, The future of earth observation from satellites will have to cater to the demands of monitoring global environment; ca rtographic mapping; long-term global change research and assessment; m onitoring and managing the renewable and non-renewable resources, etc. In this article we discuss the strategy adopted for assessing the fut ure requirements and also for defining the future Indian missions, Bas ed on this evaluation and also the need for identifying low-cost, quic k turn-around, application-specific solutions, candidate payloads for the continuation series have been defined, These candidate payloads ca ter to a majority of the application needs and specific gap-areas woul d be taken care of, Critical amongst these are the missions which will be oriented towards enhancing the vegetation discriminability with mu lti-spectral data of 5-10 m; ocean observation mission for physical an d biological parameters; observation of the atmospheric constituents, radiation budgets, clouds, etc, - much of which will be oriented towar ds global change applications; advanced systems with active microwave instruments; achieving Im resolution panchromatic data towards replace ment of aerial photography needs for cartography and resource manageme nt applications; 5 m resolution multi-spectral data (green, red, near- IR and SWIR regions), etc, A decade profile of Indian remote sensing m issions has been defined which addresses the concept of continuity, op erational missions and the advanced missions up to 2005, The impact on utilization accruing from these proposed missions has also been asses sed, A perspective of the Indian remote sensing programme for the next decade is provided.