Chennai, Oct 11 (Representative) AstroSat, India’s first dedicated multi-wavelength observatory mission has completed seven years in orbit in September. To celebrate the occasion, ISRO organised a two day conference titled “Celebrating Seven Years of AstroSat” providing a platform for astronomers to share their findings from AstroSat. The event witnessed active participation from several research institutes and academia including IITs, TIFR, IUCAA, BITS, NITs, many universities and private research institutes as well as several ISRO centers and units. AstroSat was launched into a low earth orbit of 650 km and a low inclination of 60 on September 28, 2015 from Sriharikota using PSLV C-30 rocket.
The five scientific payloads onboard AstroSat are working satisfactorily and providing world class science data serving more than 2000 users from 54 countries, ISRO said in an update. During the inagural session, Shantanu Bhatawdekar, Scientific Secretary, ISRO spoke about the launch of AstroSat, the scientific payloads onboard AstroSat and international usage of AstroSat data. He also updated about a funding initiative of ISRO to encourage the usage of AstroSat data particularly among University and colleges and how this initiative is paying dividends as seen by the number of publications coming from the funding project.