Friday, March 8, 2013

India’s first space weather reading centre

A centre of excellence specialising in reading space weather conditions to help air traffic on polar routes would come up in Kolkata by the middle of 2013, the first of its kind in the country. The centre would come up at the Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research (IISER) campus. 

Besides air traffic on polar routes, the centre would help in the functioning of GPS networks and mobile satellites placed in space.  

Several commercial flights from south Asia, Europe and north America now fly over the polar regions to cut short time and distance. Coronal Mass Ejections (CME) and solar flares are two kinds of storms originating from the sun which expose flights to immense amounts of radiation over polar regions.

The centre would also work in field of gravitational physics in terms of analysing data and would also offer PhD programs to students interested in space sciences.