ARIES and BEL Join Hands to Boost India’s Space Situational Awareness

Nainital: In a significant stride toward enhancing India’s space capabilities, the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), Nainital, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) to develop advanced technologies for tracking near-Earth objects and artificial satellites. This collaboration aims to strengthen Space Situational Awareness (SSA) and ensure the safety of satellites and their users.

The collaboration aligns with the Government of India’s Atmanirbhar Bharat and Make-in-India initiatives, focusing on indigenously developing critical space technologies. SSA, a vital aspect of space operations, involves predicting, warning, and avoiding potential collisions between space objects, thus ensuring the safety of assets in orbit.

The MoU was signed at BEL’s Ghaziabad Unit by Prof. Dipankar Banerjee, Director of ARIES, and Ms. Rashmi Kathuria, GM (SCCS) & Unit Head of BEL, in the presence of senior officials from both organizations, including Dr. Brijesh Kumar and Dr. T.S. Kumar from ARIES, and Shri Bhanu Prakash Srivastava, Director (OU) at BEL.

Under this agreement, ARIES and BEL will leverage ARIES’s state-of-the-art telescopes, including the 4-meter International Liquid Mirror Telescope (ILMT), to monitor space objects. Together, they will work on developing advanced image processing techniques, data analytics solutions, instruments, and laboratories for SSA. The partnership will also involve capacity-building workshops to train experts in SSA, while ARIES will share its expertise in space weather.