In what is considered a major technological breakthrough for India, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which has scripted a successful Indian space story on a shoes-string budget has developed a sophisticated Multi Object Tracking Radar (MOTR) that can also be deployed to monitor space debris with a view to protect satellites from the looming threat of space debris. This radar will be tested in the upcoming orbital mission of ISRO. Significantly, this Indian made radar has been designed to view objects as small as half a square metre in size from a distance of up to 1,000-km. Only five companies in the world are known to be in possession of technology to build a similar radar. The 35-tonne MOTR which is a stationary device features around 4,000 individual radiating elements capable of emitting radio frequency waves that combine to fuse into a single beam.

   In particular, this radar would come in handy for India’s proposed manned....