The chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), S. Somanath, stated that the space agency plans to launch a total of 50 geo-intelligence satellites over the next five years.
According to Somanath, the process will include layers of satellites in different orbits with the capacity to track the movement of people and create images of remote areas, especially around international borders.
"This is a new domain that is emerging not only in optical but also in SAR (synthetic aperture radar), thermal, and various other technologies," the ISRO chief said at a tech fest organised by India's premier institute, IIT-Bombay, on Thursday.
"All of it can be seen from satellites. This capability gives us enormous potential. We have been launching satellites to handle this, but there is a different way of thinking now, and we need to look at it in a much more critical manner because the power of any nation is the ability to understand what is happening around it," Somanath said.
Meanwhile, the ISRO chief also expressed his concern about students' preference for lucrative international jobs. He urged students to give preference to space agencies over these jobs. The ISRO chief made these remarks at a tech fest organised by India's premier institute, IIT-Bombay, on Thursday.