Wednesday, August 12, 2009

ISRO’s Bhuvan vs Google Earth

ISRO Logo

The India Space Research Organisation has done a lot for the advancements of Space Research & Administration in India. ISRO created history by the launch of Chandrayaan. And it has established two main Space Systems: INSAT & IRS & has developed two satellite launch vehicles PSLV & GSLV to place INSAT and the IRS satellites in the required orbits.

Now, ISRO is up with Bhuvan to compete with Google Earth. “Bhuvan” is a sanskrit word meaning “Earth”. Bhuvan will provide services similiar to Google Earth & Wikimapia, but it will be confined only within India.

Bhuvan has some special features which sets it aside from Google Earth & Wikimapia. It will have a better zooming efficiency, multilayer viewing technology, and it will update its data yearly unlike Google Earth & Wikimapia which update their data in 4 years. Using the multilayer technology, we can see data from the past dates also!

According to a article at TOI:

Bhuvan allows you to zoom far closer than the aerial view from a chopper. If Google Earth shows details upto 200 meters distance and Wikimapia upto 50 meters, Bhuvan will show images upto 10 meters, which means you can easily see details upto a three floor high building and also add information.

And the last fact, ISRO’s Bhuvan will be using indian satellites.

Here’s a table of comparison of Google Earth & Bhuvan from Wikipedia:

Feature Google Earth Bhuvan
Max Zoom 200m 10m
Layer Single Multi
Update Frequency 4 yrs 1 yr
View Viewing from only one date. Options for viewing from different dates.
Source (Satellite) Commercial/International Indian
Imagery World World

I hope to see this ISRO’s new innovation go live soon. :)

0 Comments: