India’s space research prowess took a giant leap on Monday with the launch of ASTROSAT—the country’s first multi-wavelength space observatory. The satellite, with a mission life of five years, is equipped with telescopes that can study the space in visible light, UV and low- & high-energy X-rays. It also carries an X-ray scanning sky-monitor that can detect transient X-ray emissions and gamma-ray bursts.
With all that gear, the observatory can study star-birth regions and high-energy, binary star systems, including neutron stars and black holes. The sky scanner will start gathering data in just days with the telescopes following—the last, the UV telescope, will come online in two months. India now enters a select club of countries with their own space observatories. For decades, Isro has had to rely on Nasa or ESA data to study high frequency space radiation though India’s Earth-based observatories, including the ones near Pune and Ladakh, had enabled the study of radio and infra-red waves that penetrate the atmosphere easily. The insights that ASTROSAT will provide, therefore, could considerably enrich the global understanding of space, especially as the death of Nasa’s Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer observatory in 2012 left a vacuum in the study of high frequency space X-rays.
