APRSAF-24 meet recommends collaborative development of small

The Asia Pacific Regional Space Agency Forum (APRSAF) todayrecommended that space agencies in the region collaborate to develop small or cube satellites as their data could provide inputs to solve various issues they were facing.
The APRSAF-24 working group meeting suggested promotion of educational activities, using space as a method that will be beneficialfor human resource development of the next generation, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman A S Kiran Kumar told reporters here.
The meeting recommended encouragement and acceleration of 'Kibo Utilisation' through feasibility studiesin each Asia Pacific country, he said.
It also recommended promotion of space application including rice crop, global rainfall, fire hot-spot and haze monitoring and disaster management.

Kumar said that it suggested encouraging and enabling of the Asia Pacific region with country-specific data cube initiative, data portal and analysis ready data through capacity building and if possible, by data sharing mechanisms.
Heads of space agencies from 10 countries -- India, Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, South Korea, Russia, Israel, Thailand and France -- attended the conclave.

The director of the United Nations Office ofOuter Space Affairs and two astronauts from Japan - Chiaki Mukai and Koichi Wakta -- were also part of the programme. The event had more than 600 registrations from over35 countries and international organisations, Kumar said.

Over 50 per cent of the participants were foreign nationals.
The conclave provided an opportunity to Indian and foreign industries to showcase their technological capabilities to delegates from the Asia Pacific region through an exhibition, he said.
The forum meetings were organised under four working groups namely the space application, space technology, space environment utilisation and space education.
The recent achievements and future plans of each country and region were deliberated in these working groups, Kumar said.