 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Indian Space Delegation At University Of Leicester For New Satellite Mission
Leicester, UK (SPX) Feb 17, 2005 The University of Leicester has played host to a delegation of space scientists from India to discuss plans for collaboration over a future mission. The University houses the largest academic space research centre in Europe and has links with a dozen countries. The four-strong delegation of space experts from Mumbai and Bangalore spent three days at the University thrashing out plans for building a component for a telescope on India's Astrosat Mission, due for launch in 2007. Guy Peters, Innovation Fellow at the University of Leicester's Space Research Centre, said Astrosat was the first fully-fledged astronomy satellite ever to be built by India. "We have members of the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research and the Indian Space Research Organisation at the University of Leicester. "Leicester is planning to be involved in the Soft X-Ray Telescope, and we are in the early stages of a collaborative agreement to build the camera element of the telescope. "In essence, we are doing a rebuild of the Swift camera- Swift, a mission to explore Gamma Ray bursts, launched successfully last November. It is because Leicester has such strong heritage in spacecraft design that we have been selected for this mission. "We will be expanding on our experience of building cameras for use in space for missions such as Swift and XMM and combining that with experience gained from our X-Ray Fluorescence laboratory programme, resulting in a CCD camera that is very high resolution and sensitivity and low weight. "Tata will build the main telescope body- Leicester will provide the camera design and consultancy. With our help, manufacturing will take place in India and we will be leading the integration and the calibration back in the UK." Explaining the purpose of the Indian space mission, Mr Peters added: "The wonderful thing about Astrosat is that it is a multi-wavelength mission. This means it has a wide range of telescopes that view a large area of the electromagnetic spectrum. This means that the science you get back from the observations of all the different telescopes has taken place in the same time frame. "This contrasts with other space observations from different satellites which result in a time gap whenever you collate the different results. This makes Astrosat a very ambitious mission and it has the potential to make a very high impact in the worldwide astronomy community." This is not the University of Leicester's first space link with India. A space scientist from Tata, Dr Kallol Mukerjee, had worked in the Space Research Centre on the Leicester element of the Swift mission. It was through his work at Leicester that links with India were strengthened. Scientists now hope this is the start of an ongoing relationship with India. The Leicester team consists of Chief Scientist - Gordon Stewart, Project Management- Guy Peters, camera design-Tony Abbey, mechanical engineer-Tim Stevenson. Head of Department Professor George Fraser is in overall charge. The Indian delegation consists of: Professor KP Singh - project manager for the Soft X-Ray Telescope from Mumbai; Mr Koteswara Rao - project manager for Astrosat, from Bangalore; Professor PC Agrawal, senior researcher and principal investigator for Astrosat, from Mumbai and Atul Kothare, engineer, from Mumbai. Community Email This Article Comment On This Article Related Links University of Leicester SpaceDaily Search SpaceDaily Subscribe To SpaceDaily Express Space Telescope News and Technology at Skynightly.com
UCSC Physicists Deliver Detector For NASA's GLAST Telescope
Santa Cruz CA (SPX) Nov 09, 2005After more than a decade of work, a team led by physicists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has completed a major detector subsystem for NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST). |
|
|
| The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2006 - SpaceDaily.AFP and UPI Wire Stories are copyright Agence France-Presse and United Press International. ESA PortalReports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additionalcopyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by SpaceDaily on any Web page published or hosted by SpaceDaily. Privacy Statement |
