Cuttack, July 15: The Orissa government would be taking help of satellite technology to extend quality education to schools in remote areas.

The school and mass education department has begun an initiative aimed at providing satellite-based education to overcome lack of adequate infrastructure and non-availability of teachers in villages.

Senior officials say the move would be realised through Satellite Interactive Terminals (SITs) and Orissa Remote Sensing Application Centre (Orsac) under the department of science and technology that had been assigned to come up with the Educational Satellite (Edusat) hub and SITs in targeted schools.

Edusat is the first Indian satellite built exclusively to meet the demand of an interactive satellite-based distance education system in the country. Officials said 40 schools that lack teachers, textbooks and infrastructure have been identified for the project.

The Edusat hub has been installed at Orsac in Bhubaneswar. Orsac is the apex state body for space technology applications and comprises a pool of multi-disciplinary applications to undertake remote sensing, GIS, GPS and communication technology applications. The work on the Edusat-SIT network involving schools have been completed in collaboration with Indian Space Research Organisation of the department of space. “Satellite Interactive Terminals with two-way audio and video broadcasting have been installed in 40 schools in 28 districts,” the chief executive of Orsac, Debajit Mishra, told The Telegraph today.