With the fifth GSLV launch slated for sometime in the first week of September, a book on ISRO's various programmes that touch many ordinary lives could not have been launched at a better time.
However, 'Touching Lives' by S K Das, adviser, ISRO is not just about the space programmes of the organisation. But as the title continues to say, it is about showing how ISRO has made "space a community resource".
It is published by Penguin. The author, an IAS officer who has been associated with ISRO for some years now, and is incidentally well-versed in Kannada, journeys to the far reaches of India, from Jhabua to Chamrajnagar, from Sundarbans to Chamoli. In so doing he unravels how the space programme has impacted the ordinary lives.
Former chairman ISRO, and Rajya Sabha MP Kasturirangan noted, the book was not about space application as much as it was a "mosaic of India and its varied problems."
Earlier, ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair and T K A Nair, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, were present on the occasion.