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Ahsan Jamil
THE SIGNIFICANCE of space science and technology for the fulfillment of reasonable advancement and the need to reinforce the space technology subjects were among the talks held at a three-day event organized by Institute of Space Technology (IST) in order to form unison with the developed countries to mark the celebration of International Space Week.
Chairman Pakistan Council for Science and Technology (PCST) Prof Dr Anwar-ul-Hassan Gilani attended the inaugural event as chief guest. During his address to the participants, he stressed on the innovative technologies in space sciences for advancement and contribution of Pakistan in exploring the universe. He said, “Space technology could add to enhancing lives and ensuring the protection of earth from various challenges including climate change, forecasting of weather, gathering information and abetting in defense sector, precipitation and understanding the complex models through satellite imagery and using advanced tools such as Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS)”.
Dr. Najam Abbas, Deputy Director IST during his keynote address underscored the importance of space technology and noted the contributions of IST in this regard in covering the academic aspect in capacity building in this under-acknowledge domain of technology whose importance is vastly credited in the developed countries.
It is important to note that the neighboring countries China, India are charting their way towards space technology and a governmental support is on top in those countries while Pakistan is engrossed in trivial petty governance issues. As a result, India has recently launched its first ever astronomical satellite ASTROSAT into space, which is the Hubble equivalent of South-Asia. Similarly, Chinese authorities have launched a satellite made by university students which has already begun sending back data.
On comparable example, the space sector of Pakistan demands striking consideration from government with a specific end goal to embark journey towards sustainable future and improvement through best in class innovation and development step towards advancement of space innovation at grass root level and also the top level so as to arouse the human asset in this inhabitant and concentrate greatest advantage. Pakistan has enormous ability given the best possible use and providing guidance it can make ponders. The space week occasion composed by IST has surely had reverberated its voice to the force passageways through inclusiveness of stakeholders in the event.
Although, the space week event theme is Discovery and IST utilized its available resources aptly to maneuver students participation in different sort of engaging activities and competitions to pull them towards discovering and instilling curiosity in them in order to make them space scientists and technologists to fill the gap created by dearth of human resource in space sector.