An agreement was signed by both the space agency and the engineering institute on Friday on the industry-academic collaboration at Surathkal, which is about 380km from Bengaluru.

A regional academic centre is set up by the Indian Space Research Organisation for space. This is set up at the National Institute of Technology which is located in Karnataka’s southwest Dakshina Kannada district, Surathkal. This was disclosed by an official on Sunday.

A joint research and development will be conducted at the centre at NIT-K in space technology applications. This is to meet the needs of our space programs, says the space agency’s capacity building director P. V. Venkitakrishnan in a statement he provided. An annual grant of Rs. 2 crores will be provided by the state-run ISRO for the Research and Development projects to NIT. This also includes grants for promotional activities through the year.

Being fourth in the country, this centre will provide promoting space technology in the states of South India. These southern states include Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Puducherry, Telangana and Kerala. It will also act as an ambassador for awareness and research and development and also capacity-building, says Venkitakrishnan further on the occasion.

Get more details through the official website, https://www.isro.gov.in/ .

Guidance for the centre in optimal utilization of infrastructure, research potential, experience and expertise of both space agency and the autonomous institute will be provided by a joint policy and management committee. The director said that activities like common interest research programs and periodic project reviewing will be planned by the committee.

The centre’s activities, including its projects, will be directed by the visiting scientists and experts of ISRO and faculty members of NIT.

NIT’s K. Umamahewaran Rao said under-graduate students (B. Tech) and post-graduate students (M. Tech) will be involved in short-term research projects of one year and long-term projects of 2-4 years in advance space programs. ISRO and NITK will jointly own the intellectual project rights generated in the projects.

There will be a collaboration between both the academic and research institutions in setting up optical telescope facilities. This will be done under the Netra project for studying space weather, space object tracking, near earth objects and asteroids. IIA Director Annapurni said that this collaboration will be of great help for progress in various fields of astronomy and astrophysics.

The space agency’s scientific secretary R. Umamaheswaran also added that the agreement envisages utilization of IIA’s expertise in astronomy and astrophysics for developing advanced technologies for inter-planetary space explorations.

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