Report by Yashasvi Anika Tandon
The first big Space Centre of North India and India’s second space training centre, after Thiruvananthapuram, has been inaugurated in Jammu by ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation).
It was inaugurated by the Union minister, Mr Jitendra Singh, at the Central University of Jammu. It has been named after former ISRO chairman Satish Dhawan and is called the Satish Dhawan Centre for Space Sciences.
Only 60 students will be taken in the course provided at the training centre. The course will be BTech (graduate degree in engineering) in Aviation and Aeronautics. The central IIT_JEE admission test will be used to select students.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed in October 2018 with the Central University of Jammu to set up a Space Centre in Jammu and to equip the centre with facilities such as geo-spatial data analysis so that it would help in continuous analysis of land-use patterns and natural resources.
The centre already has ground-based observations for atmospheric studies, research for astrophysics, atmospheric sensing, and special laboratories for studying glaciers for more productive and better use of water stored in the form of seasonal snow, glaciers, and ice in North Indian rivers, in large quantities.
Image Credit: ISRO