Karnataka - Bangalore

ISRO to set up Space Instrumentation Centre

Bangalore: In preparation for its constellation of forthcoming scientific satellites, including Chandrayaan II, the solar coronagraph Aditya and manned space missions, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will be setting up a Space Instrumentation Centre here to manufacture scientific payloads that the spacecraft will carry.

The laboratory will be established early next year on the ISRO Satellite Centre campus here, ISRO Chairman G. Madhavan Nair told The Hindu.

“Scientists in research laboratories and universities from across the country, who come up with concepts, can now have their ideas translated into instruments,” said T.K. Alex, Director of the ISRO Satellite Centre.

The role of the centre would essentially be to convert prototypes into “flyable hardware”, he added.

Between 10 and 15 types of instruments would be developed here in the next few years, including X-Ray detectors and Ultraviolet ray sensors. With this centre, universities and labs that did not have the necessary technology to manufacture instruments, would have the opportunity to have their ideas engineered and manufactured, Dr. Alex said.

Chandrayaan I, for instance, had 11 payloads of which five were indigenous. They included the Terrain Mapping Camera to create a three-dimensional atlas of the moon; and the Moon Impact Probe, which crash-landed at its pre-selected location on the moon on November 14. ISRO also gave opportunity to the international scientific community, including National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and European Space Agency (ESA), to fly six payloads in the spacecraft, he said.

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