India today became the seventh country in the world to possess heliborne survey system for conducting mineral exploration. The minister for mines, Dinsha Patel dedicated to the nation a custom-built ALH-Dhruv, Garuda Vasudha.
Speaking on the occasion through video conference from Delhi, Patel hailed the efforts of HAL in making this possible and said the copter should be used to get maximum benefits in larger economic interests of the country. “With the best and modern equipment fitted, this helicopter will help in exploration and mapping of mineral wealth in India,” he added.
The copter is equipped with geophysical survey system, said R K Tyagi, Chairman, HAL. The GSI and HAL have come together to deploy Garuda Vasudha in a specialised role of ‘heliborne surveys’ and ‘mineral exploration’ with the integration of the geo-physical multi-sensor survey systems, he added.
The ALH is integrated with geo-systems and would be utilised mainly for geological and geophysical exploration and mapping, environmental and nuclear surveillance, mineral, oil and gas exploration. The presence of rare earth minerals such as gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, nickel, cobalt, uranium, thorium, diamond, coal, petroleum, water, platinum, chromate, manganese and iron can be surveyed.
Presently, India is dependent on manual surveys or ground-based vehicle surveying or by fast-moving aircraft. The use of ALH will result in geo-survey benefits by accessing remote areas achieving self-reliance in this field.
For instance, India’s net petroleum products' import for 2012-13 was Rs 5,33,907 crore (137.35 mmt) and if geo-survey benefits by 1% it would amount to reduction of imports by Rs 5,000 crore, HAL said in a statement.
India also imported raw material, ores and minerals for industrial use to the tune of Rs 6,71,008 crore for 2012-13. With the new findings and exploration by using ALH, substantial amount could be saved in the import bill, the company said.
The Garuda-Vasuda is equipped with magnetic, spectrometric and gravity heliborne geo-physical survey systems to carry out survey in India.
The survey help geophysicists in data acquisition, processing and interpretation followed by geologists to carry out integration of geological and remote sensing data for understanding the sub-surface geology and regional tectonic set-up to help in geological mapping and identification of target blocks for mineral prospecting.
