New Delhi: Assam will soon be home to the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Advanced Radar Research Centre, which will advance India’s capabilities in assessing rainfall, monitoring potential disasters, and tracking objects in space.
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, along with ISRO chairperson V Narayanan, laid the foundation for the facility on Monday.
“This centre will help us scientifically study how the happenings in space would influence happenings in our country. We will be able to get timely information on rainfall, floods, and other natural disasters or calamities,” Sarma said during the event.
ThePrint explains how ISRO’s Advanced Radar Research Centre (ARRC) will function and how it is expected to benefit India’s capabilities.
The facility
The upcoming ISRO facility is part of the space agency’s Project NETRA (Network for Space Objects Tracking and Analysis), created to advance India’s capabilities in space situational awareness (SSA).
This is the first facility of its kind in Northeast India. It has a phased array radar, which uses a grid of multiple fixed antenna elements to electronically steer and scan beams from space. This facility will be capable of scanning objects as small as 10 cm, with a tracking range up to 2,000 km.
The centre has been allocated 70 acres of land in Assam’s Chandrapur. Along with a full-fledged tracking system designed to track space objects, satellites, debris, and other objects moving in space, ISRO will also be placing a network of on-ground radar systems. This will add to the agency’s existing network of ground stations spread across the country.
Sarma said the first radar—intended for cloud research—is expected to come up by February 2027.
“As part of Project NETRA, this facility will strengthen India’s ability to track objects in space and protect our vital space assets. For a state once considered far from India’s major centres of technology, it is deeply satisfying to see Assam today becoming home to such cutting-edge national infrastructure,” Sarma said during Monday’s event.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)
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