Union Minister of State for Science and Technology Dr. Jitender Singh said the Chandrayaan-3 launch will once again help the country take a quantum leap into the global arena for its scientific and technological capabilities just like it was underscored during the COVID vaccine, on Thursday.
“Chandrayaan-3 launch is going to be historic and will only be reiterating our indigenous capabilities and firmly place us as an important global player. It has been a miraculous turn of events as we had started much late when compared to the developed nations, but it is our Chandrayan which had found evidence of water on the moon,” he pointed out.
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Dr. Singh was talking to the media after participating in the 11th India Alliance Conclave and stated that the inferences and findings of the Indian space scientists are being put to use by all the leading agencies of the world including NASA – National Aeronautics and Space Administration. “We are on the same pedestal now and the credit for this has to go to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for unlocking space technology for the public, breaking the taboos of the past,” he claimed.
Earlier, addressing the gathering, the Minister invited Indian scientists settled abroad to return home as the country has much to offer in terms of research facilities and financial resources, unlike the past. “There has been a big change in the last 50 years and we are going to play a key role in clean energy and climate change with our digital innovations going to come in handy,” he said and urged the scientists to look for indigenous solutions for local problems and ensure the data being generated by the scientific institutions is ‘synchronised’.
The India Alliance (IA) is a charitable trust funded by the Department of Biotechnology and Wellcome Trust (UK) in 2008. It has been providing researchers at various stages of their career to pursue pioneering research in biomedical sciences. DBT secretary Rajesh Gokhale called for a relook at the way funding is done for research projects and how to share resources as well as data between various institutions. Climate change and artificial intelligence have thrown major challenges, he said.
Wellcome Trust CEO Interim Dr Paul Schreier said the IA in the last 15 years had produced quality research and about 605 scientists had received support. It was decided to extend the timeframe for four major projects from five to seven years. India Alliance CEO Interim Dr Debashis Mitra and Trustee Alka Sharma also spoke.
