Information Madness

ISRO planned to launch is own Google Earth like mapping application last year. The plan is now becoming reality. The ISRO's revolutionary earth mapping tool called ‘Bhuvan' was launched here today. The website is available in beta version. It is believed that the ISRO's latest earth mapping tool have more features than Google Earth.

The Bhuvan is focused on Indian sub-continent barring all sensitive locations such as military and nuclear installations. ISRO's Bhuvan is latest version of Google Earth, which allows common man to zoom into any part of the world on their personal computer using satellite images.

Bhuvan is a Geoportal of Indian Space Research Organisation showcasing Indian Imaging Capabilities in Multi-sensor, Multi-platform and Multi-temporal domain. The portal gives a gateway to explore and discover virtual earth in 3D space with specific emphasis on Indian region.

The new mapping service Bhuvan is a Sanskrit word of earth. It will allow users to have a closer look at any part of the subcontinent. Bhuvan will provide the pictures of objects as small as a car on the road to build three-dimensional map of the world via ISRO's seven remote sensing satellites.

The degree of resolution showcased is based on points of interest and popularity, but most of the Indian terrain is covered upto at least six meters of resolution with the least spatial resolution being 55 meters.

The Bhuvan toolbar can be downloaded from http://bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in/ but the site seems to be down for quite some time. I have been trying to visit the site and I get request timeout errors.

Updates

I was able to visit the ISRO Bhuvan Project homepage. You first need to register to the site to actually experience the ISRO maps. Once you register, you will be taken to install the browser plugin. You can download the browser plugin from here directly. It basically installs the TerraExplorer on your computer.

Once you install the Bhuvan browser plugin, you can login to bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in and it will take you to the Bhuvan Maps. I am currently trying to load the page but IE6 is crashing while loading the Bhuvan Maps.

Updates 2: This is what I actually found out. You don't have to open up IE to view Bhuvan Maps. Once you install the above Plugin (TerraExplorer), you can open up this SkyGlobeLB.fly file. So just open up TerraExplorer and open the SkyGlobeLB.fly fiile and you can start viewing ISRO Bhuvan Maps. Check out some screen shots of Mumbai City taken by ISRO Bhuvan

Update 3: You can download the SkyGlobeLB.fly file

This is what the Bhuvan Maps Interface looks like..