India is planning to rival
Google Earth by building a higher-resolution web-based global
mapping service.
The service, dubbed Bhuvan, has been developed by the Indian
Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in collaboration with India's
software industry.
Bhuvan, which means "earth" in Sanskrit, will be backed by
India's satellite network and provided to users free of charge, but
top quality images may come at a cost in future, according to the
Financial Times.
The service, which will cover India only at first, has been
designed to deliver higher quality and more frequently updated
images than Google Earth, the ISRO claims.
The ISRO plans to have a prototype ready before the end of the
year to launch the service early in 2009.
The ISRO has not released any details of the cost of the
project, which comes very soon after last month's launch of
Chandrayaan-1,
India's first moon mission.
The next major event in the Chandrayaan-1 programme is the
release of the Moon Impact Probe "in the coming days" the ISRO
said.