New Delhi: Space Science experiments often demand development of new technologies. Some of the new developments made in the last three years are as listed below :
- Development of highly polished optical mirrors – for a solar coronographic mission – Aditya-L1
- Development of large, light-weight collimators with non-cylindrical aperture – for x-ray polarimetric applications – XpoSAT mission
- Development of indigenous silicon sensors and coatings for optical and IR spectroscopic applications – for payloads on Chandrayaan-2 mission
A study committee constituted by ISRO to chart out the long-term program for space science exploration, has prepared a report outlining high priority missions to be taken up. These include followup missions to Mars, a new mission to Venus and a return to Moon with capability to return samples from extra-terrestrial sources.
Bilateral cooperations are often useful to maximise science returns from payloads due to a large dependency of complimentary information from multiple sensors on ground and in space. Hence these are encouraged on a case-by-case basis. There have been cooperative programs with Canadian Space Agency and UK universities on our astronomy satellite, ASTROSAT ; similar cooperation programs have been established in the past on Chandrayaan-1 mission with NASA and the European Space Agency.
Indian Space research Organisation through the programme called RESPOND (Sponsored Research) is encouraging academia to participate in the R & D activities. Respond programme provides support to research projects in wide range of topics in space technology, space science and applications to universities/ institutions. ISRO has also set up Space Technology Cells at various institutions like Indian Institute of Technologies (IITs) – Bombay, Kanpur, Kharagpur & Madras; Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore and with University of Pune (UoP) to carry out research activities. Some of the other recent initiatives for capacity building include setting up of Space Technology Incubation Centres (S-TIC) and Regional Academic Centres for Space (RAC-S).
This information was provided by the Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Development of North-Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh in written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha today.
