AstroSat, India’s maiden multiwavelength space-based observatory, turned seven years of operations Wednesday.
Launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in 2015, AstroSat was originally meant to operate for five years and designed for seven years.
Conceived in the early 1990s, the building of this observatory brought together the scientists from ISRO, Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune, Raman Research Institute (RRI) and Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) in Bengaluru, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) and Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad.
Its onboard instruments / payloads namely the Ultra Violet Imaging Telescope (UVIT), Large Area X-Ray Proportional Counters (LAXPC), Soft X-Ray Telescope (SXT), Cadmium Zinc Telluride Imager (CZTI) , Scanning Sky Monitor (SSM) and Charged Particle Monitor (CPM) together make this 1,513 kilograms-weighing AstroSat a unique observatory exclusively for astronomy.
Pune’s IUCAA, which houses the AstroSat Science Support Cell, has been guiding the students and scientists in designing their research and writing proposals seeking time to use the observatory. At present, the AstroSat’s user community exceeds 3,000, including over 1,000 international users led by the United States, Italy, Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom, from among the 54 countries.
“Astronomy will be the subject of the 21st century and AstroSat is an extraordinary mission,” said former ISRO chairman K. Kasturirangan, who spoke during a special event organised at the ISRO Headquarters in Bengaluru Wednesday.
Speaking on the occasion, ISRO chairman S. Somanath noted the space agency is keen to integrate and plan multi-institution missions in future.
