Indian brainpower sought to drive NASA earth data

Wednesday, 08 January 2003, 20:30 IST
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BANGALORE: It is not only in software that the U.S. needs Indian intellectual capital - it needs Indian brainpower to understand the complexities of data emanating from earth science satellites. "If you can do it for Microsoft, why not for earth sciences or space technology?" asked James Dodge, director of earth sciences at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). "Our own students are seeking other careers. We have a shortage of people in space science. We need intellectual capital in this area," he said at a news conference on the last day of the Indian Science Congress here. "Assimilating data, for instance, to predict weather is one promising area where cooperation between India and the U.S. could grow. We have data but we need to analyse it," he said. The U.S. has sent aloft several earth sciences satellites that generate huge amounts of data. Pointing to the difficulties in studying this information, he said scientists were still grappling with several models to correctly predict the monsoon. "It's a difficult mathematical problem. Neither the model followed by the Indian Meteorological Department or the fluid dynamics model followed by the U.S. and other countries can correctly predict the monsoon. "What we require is people with the ability to master physics and mathematics. The brainpower exists here. It is more a sharing of minds," he said in reply to a question. Dodge had during his presentation at the Space Summit, held as part of the science congress, said NASA's biggest difficulty lay in the area of meteorological prediction. "This is one major area in which India's experts can help NASA," he maintained. "We are right now swimming with new data that could predict the future. Our focus, like the Indian space programme, is also on meeting the societal needs in the next two decades," he added.
Source: IANS