Made In India: Indian Space Start-Up Tracks Mosquitoes Using Spy Satellite Tech
As summer is here and monsoon season approaches, it's time to prepare for the return of our familiar foe: mosquitoes, small yet effective at causing annoyance and spreading diseases. Thankfully, India now boasts its own homegrown technology to detect mosquito breeding, providing hope for relief in the near future.
Spy technology to detect mosquitos
Mosquitoes thrive in water and are tough to detect using satellites and drones.?However, a Kolkata-based space technology startup named Sisir Radar has utilised high-tech hyperspectral imaging to identify if water containers and bodies contain mosquito larvae.?
The startup has adapted advanced spy and surveillance satellite technology to spot mosquito breeding grounds.?
To carry out the detection, they equipped custom-made cameras on drones.
Sisir Radar stated the process of their experiments. First, clean water and larvae-infested water were placed in earthen and transparent plastic tumblers. Next, they were imaged using their drone-borne hyperspectral imager from a height of 15 meters, equivalent to the height of a five-storied block in Kolkata.?
It is believed that this research will go a long way in precisely identifying sources of mosquito larvae in water, enabling insecticides to be sprayed in a measured manner.
40 million deaths due to mosquito-borne diseases in India alone
Tapan Misra, former director of ISRO's Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad and founder of Sisir Radar, stated, "The present method of insecticide spraying is done arbitrarily and our water bodies and aquatic life forms are poisoned unnecessarily. Our research will help in not only eliminating the menace of mosquitoes at the larvae stage itself, benefitting our environment but also reducing the needless malaria and dengue deaths very significantly."
Mosquito-borne diseases are caused by bacteria, viruses, or parasites spread by mosquitoes. Every year, almost 700 million people are affected by these diseases, leading to more than 725,000 deaths.
In India alone, every year, about 40 million people contract diseases transmitted by mosquitoes. Among the most prevalent mosquito-borne illnesses are malaria, dengue, chikungunya, and the Zika virus.
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