India's first astronomy satellite gets nod

India's first astronomy satellite gets nod
PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

Hyderabad, Jan 18: Indian scientists, who have been asking for a dedicated satelite to study the X-rays coming from the universe, have at last received the green signal to develop and build the payload for the country's first full-fledged astronomy satellite named "Astrosat".

But the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has said that launch of `Astrosat' depends on how the astronomers progressed in the next 18 months with the development of the three X-ray instruments including an X-ray space telescope that they had proposed for the mission. ISRO has agreed to fund the payload development.

``We have to develop the prototype instruments in this period and show that we can indeed successfully make them in India'', P C Agrawal, of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai told Nature.

He said the proposed payload is an order of magnitude more complex than the one his team has built for an X-ray experiment on board the Indian remote sensing satellite launched in 1996. In fact, he said that two of the instruments -- X-ray imaging telescope and position sensitive focal plane detector -- `Involve new technologies which we are trying to develop here for the first time'.

An ISRO spokesman said the Agency is aiming for Astrosat launch using the home-made polar satellite launch vehicle `in about five years', subject to the payload being readied in 18 months. Agarwal's team at the TIFR will build the payload.

He said that Astrosat has been proposed for studying a variety of cosmic sources ranging from nearby stars to distant extra-galacticobjects like quasars and other Active Galactic Nuclei. `The proposal is the result of interactions between investigators from several institutions engaged in astronomy research in India', he said.

Astrosat has already received the endorsement of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. In a December 7 speech in New Delhi he said that future space research in India `will unfold many new opportunities as our scientists are dreaming to establish a state-of-the-art multi-wave length observatory called Astrosat to conduct front ranking research in astronomy and undertake new endeavours in planetary exploration'.