NEW DELHI: To expand the ambit of Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) and give a platform to youth in space research, the country’s elite space agency is in the process of setting up six incubation centres and the same number of research centres across the country over the next one year.
Talking to TOI, Isro chairman
K Sivan
said, “Isro will set up six space technology incubation centres to expand the horizon of our organisation. Last month, an incubation centre was opened in Agartala by Tripura chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb. The remaining centres will be established in Jalandhar, Bhubaneswar, Nagpur, Indore and Tiruchirapalli.”
He said, “These incubation centres will promote start-ups and give thrust to innovations and research in space technologies. They will be opened wherever there is presence of academia and industrialists. The centres will help start-ups develop prototypes of components in space systems in partnership with the industry. Isro will evaluate these prototypes and buy them depending upon their worthiness.”
On the financial cost, Sivan said, “Isro will provide the seed money to these startups. It will also bear the cost of infrastructure and provide initial funds to startups for space equipment.” Each centre is likely to cost Rs 2 crore to establish.
The
Isro chairman
said, “We are also planning to set up space research centres at Guwahati, Jaipur, Varanasi, Kurukshetra, Patna and Kanyakumari. These centres will focus entirely on research and give a platform to the talented youth across the country to come up with bright ideas and do research on those ideas for developing space technologies.”
A few days ago, the Isro chairman, accompanied by Union minister Jitendra Singh and former Isro chief K Radhakrishnan, signed an MoU with the Central University of Jammu for setting up Satish Dhawan Centre for Space Science on the campus. This will be the first of its kind institute to come up in north India.
Sivan said the new centre “will help in tapping potential of space applications for the region of J&K in various fields like disaster management, health, education, communication, weather forecasting and land use planning”. It will have ground-based observations for atmospheric studies, research lab for astrophysics, atmospheric sensing and glacier study lab for better use of large quantity of water stored in the form of seasonal snow, ice and glaciers.
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