Prithvi, India's most sophisticated medium-range missile, was successfully test-fired from the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur, 15 km from Balasore, Orissa, on Tuesday.

Defence Research and Development Organisation scientists, who conducted the test, described it as a user's trial.

The indigenously developed missile, with a range of 150 to 250 km, was fired at 11.27 IST, according to ITR sources.

The test was part of the efforts to further fine-tune the missile, which has already been inducted into the army, the sources said.

The 8.56 metre-high and one-metre thick missile, which took off perfectly, is part of India's Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme. It was developed for the army, air force and navy.

Courtesy: www.rediff.com, April 29, 2003

Bangalore: India has developed a low-probability intercept radar that cannot be detected by an incoming aircraft and can escape from an anti-radiation missile attack.

The radar for naval applications has been developed by scientists of the defence PSU Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL).

"This radar is one which is protecting itself by not allowing the incoming aircraft to detect its presence," BEL's chairman and managing director V K Koshy told newspapers here on Wednesday.

This is different in the sense that a normal radar sends out a warning to incoming aircraft that it is being tracked, he pointed out. "The low probability intercept radar developed by BEL does the radiation in a special way at a very low level of power," Koshy said.

Dubbed as a "silent radar", it can be saved from anti-radiation missile attack by the aircraft since it cannot be detected by the aircraft, he noted.

According to Koshy, the main features of the new radar, are: nil personal hazard, high resolution, fully solid state and low power consumption.

BEL has also developed a handheld secure radio, as well as digital satellite news gathering system to provide live news coverage, he added.

Courtesy: The Times of India, April 17, 2003

MUMBAI: The first indigenous stealth warship, being constructed by Mazgaon Dock here for the Indian Navy, will be launched on April 18 at a special function here.

Defence Minister George Fernandes will be the chief guest while wife of Admiral Madhavendra Singh, Kaumudi Kumari will launch the ship, a Mazgoan Dock release said on Tuesday.

The vessel, the first of the three stealth ships of Project 17, with unusual design with reduced noise level, will be commissioned in December 2005, the sources said.

Built at a cost of Rs 700 crore, the metal for the ship was cut in December 2000.

The ship will have both offensive and defensive mechanisms against enemy ships, submarines and aircraft and has the capacity to substantially influence the war on land.

The warship is expected to be equipped with Klub and supersonic "Bramhos", missiles.

The second and third warship of the Project 17 are expected to be commissioned in December 2006 and December 2007 respectively.

Courtesy: www.timesofindia.com, April 16, 2003

BANGALORE: In another significant milestone in India's space programme, multi-purpose satellite INSAT-3A was successfully launched on board the European Ariane-5 rocket from the French Guyanese spaceport of Kourou in South America in the early hours on Thursday.

The launch, delayed by a day after a minor anomaly was noticed in the satellite on Wednesday, went on with clockwork precision as the European consortium rocket lifted off according to launch window schedule, carrying INSAT-3A and an American satellite and injecting them into space, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) sources said here.

As Ariane-5 carried out its mission, ISRO Chairman Dr K Kasturirangan and other top space scientists, including Project Director R K Rajangam, who were present at Kourou, expressed their joy over the successful launch.

Describing the Ariane-5 launch as "a wonderful achievement" in his post-launch comment, a beaming Kasturirangan said it was a "very eventful flight, spectacular and more importantly, technologically precise".

The launch of INSAT-3A was called off for the day yesterday after it was observed that the signal strength from one of the two telemetry transmitters was "less than nominal" during the final checks midway through the 11 and a half hours countdown.

Indigenously built ISRO's biggest satellite, INSAT-3A, the third satellite in the INSAT-3 series, would provide telecommunication, television broadcasting, meteorology and satellite-aided search and rescue services.

Courtesy: www.timesofindia.com, April 10, 2003

India is developing 'Agni-III', a long-range surface-to-surface missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads, and is making all efforts to test-fire it this year, according to Defence Minister George Fernandes.

"The test firing of Agni-III is overdue and we feel the need for that long-range missile as part of our policy of deterrence," he told PTI in an interview.

Asked as to what would be the range of Agni-III, Fernandes said it would have a strike capacity longer than Agni-II, which has a range of over 2000 kms.

India is in possession of surface-to-surface missiles, 700-km range Agni-I and Agni II, which are both capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

To a question as to when Agni-III would be test-fired, the minister said, "The date has not been firmed up. Effort is to see that it is test-fired this year".

On whether Agni-I and Agni-II have been deployed with the armed forces, Fernandes said "well, they are available for deployment".

Replying to a question on if these missiles would be with the strategic forces or the Army, he said "that will depend on the situation that will demand their use".

Fernandes replied in the affirmative when asked if Agni-I and Agni-II were being produced.

Courtesy: www.hindustantimes.com, April 07, 2003

LONDON: In a potentially revolutionary medical advance, the world's very first diagnostic blood test for Tuberculosis (TB) has been unveiled here by an Oxford scientist originally from Delhi.

The Elispot test developed by Dr Ajit Lalvani has raised hopes that mankind's ancient scourge and biggest killer disease may eventually be eradicated.

The test crucially identifies people with "early dormant TB before they become infectious to other people", Lalvani told TNN.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) is understood to be interested in adopting it because of the potential giant leap forward in TB control.

WHO estimates say TB infection is currently spreading at the rate of one person per second.

Lalvani, a researcher with the charitable Wellcome Trust, said: "In countries such as the USA, it could eradicate TB in a matter of decades, in countries like India, it would obviously take longer".

TB claims more lives than AIDS and malaria taken together. Roughly 900 million people worldwide are estimated to be infected.

People with dormant TB display none of the "wasting away" symptoms of the so-called poet's disease. They have so far been difficult to identify by the antiquated, crude, highly-fallible "skin prick" test developed by Robert Koch 100 years ago.

The innovation is described as the world's first blood test to diagnose a disease by looking for cells in the blood produced by the immune system. These are called T-cells.

Normally, blood tests look for antibodies to make a diagnosis.

The test, hailed in the West after a report in the prestigious Lancet medical journal, published on Friday, is currently under trial in Mumbai, said Lalvani.

He said the test could help India, with its "huge burden of TB" by diagnosing the disease in HIV-infected people and young children who are traditionally hard to spot as TB sufferers.

The new test is said to be simple and quick compared to the week-long wait prescribed by the current "skin prick" method. Lalvani stressed that it was crucially not confused by the BCG vaccination either, leading to "eventual savings" in developing countries' TB control budgets.

Lalvani, a 39-year-old, Delhi-born, London-bred and Oxford-educated boy from India, said he was happy to be able to show there may be light at the end of the tunnel for tuberculosis-ravaged areas of the world.

Medical pundits said the test may finally call time on a disease so old and so virulent that tissue samples from 4,000-year-old Egyptian mummies showed signs of infection.

If all goes well, said a pleased Lalvani, the new blood test may become routinely available around the world in a few years time.

The test is on trial in eight other TB-wracked spots of the globe.

The Wellcome Trust said it would replace the world's oldest diagnostic test, developed by the man who originally discovered tubercular bacteria.

Courtesy: www.timesofindia.com, April 05, 2005

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is all set to go ahead with its ambitious unmanned moon mission and plans to seek a green signal from the Union government in the next 8-10 months.

A galaxy of 60 top scientists and technologists held a marathon meeting in Bangalore on Friday to discuss the lunar mission plan.

A peer review meeting of the lunar mission study task force has decided to submit a detailed report to the Centre for approval.

"Based on the discussions, a project report will be sent to the prime minister, who also heads the Department of Space.

We will also incorporate the suggestions and recommendations of the scientific community, which was represented by the heads of various government and private organisations," an ISRO official told rediff.com

Among those who participated in the meeting were ISRO chairman K Kasturirangan, former scientific advisor to the prime minister M G K Menon, former UGC chairman Yashpal, National Institute of Advanced Studies director Roddam Narasimha, and astro-physicist Jayant Narlikar.

"In spite of divergent views aired in public on the viability of the project, we are on course to launch the mission," sources added.

ISRO proposes to send a vehicle to orbit the moon by 2005 at an estimated cost of $120million to conduct experiments that will unravel the mysteries of the satellite.

"By embarking on the lunar mission, we want to demonstrate that India can also undertake complex projects involving cutting-edge space technologies," Kasturirangan had stated at the 90th Indian Science Congress held in Bangalore recently.

Courtesy: www.rediff.com, April 05, 2003

Bangalore, April 1. India on Tuesday became the fifth nation in the world to have a next generation high performance scalable supercomputing cluster with a peak computing power of one teraflop.

Named PARAM Padma, India's most powerful computer was dedicated to the nation by Union Minister for Disinvestment, Communications and Information Technology, Arun Shourie, here.

PARAM Padma is housed at C-DAC's Terascale Supercomputing Facility (CTSF) here.

According to Executive Director of C-DAC, RK Arora, only the US, Japan, Israel and China possess such a capability. He said the latest terascale supercomputing system has several hundred gigaflops of sustained power on internationally accepted benchmarks and storage of over 10 terabytes.

C-DAC officials said PARAM Padma is ten times more powerful than PARAM 10000. They said PARAM Padma is powered by C-DAC's flexible and scalable HPCC (High Performance Computing and Communication) software environment. The system is also accessible by users from remote locations.

Recalling that supercomputer technology was denied to India years back, Shourie said PARAM Padma is an "answer to the world", and highlighted new system's importance from the perspective of security-related matters.

Technology denial should be taken as a blessing and challenge, he told scientists.

Courtesy: www.hindustantimes.com, April 02, 2003