India's first space university lifts off

23 Jul 2007

1

India's first space university is all set to lift off, to produce experts that can take the country's satellite and rocket programmes to higher orbits. The Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) will begin operating just after Independence Day from the campus of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre at Thiruvananthapuram next month.

The Institute, which offers technical courses in space science and technology, has already attracted some of India's brightest minds. "Our original plan was to recruit students from the extended list of the IIT joint entrance exam (IIT-JEE). But we got a large number of applicants from the main list itself," says G Madhavan Nair, Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which has set up the institute.

ISRO will create a full-fledged campus for the IIST at Ponmudi, near the Kerala state capital, which will be ready in about two years. Around 150 students will be enrolled in aeronautical and avionics engineering, and in the integrated MSc in space sciences, in the first academic year.

ISRO has set up the institute as it is faced with large-scale attrition with scientists leaving for better assignments in private industry and abroad. On the one hand it has been unable to attract the best talent. "Most of the students who come out of the IITs and IISc, Bangalore, either join management courses, the IT industry, or go abroad; they are not available to the Indian scientific community," Nair said.

The Bangalore-based ISRO gets over 70,000 applications each year, of which it short-lists around 1,500 after written tests. In the final selection, it has been unable to pinpoint even 200 with the right aptitude, when it requires around 300. "We cannot rely on the marks given by engineering colleges. We have to conduct our own tests. Finally, we get only a handful of people. So, we thought we need to catch the students at the plus-2 level (12th standard)," Nair, who is also the Secretary in the Department of Space, said.

The students will learn propulsion, aero dynamics, navigation, guidance, sub-systems, avionics, control systems, etc, so that ISRO can absorb them as soon as they pass out of the Institute. The course is heavily subsidised by ISRO, and the students joining the IIST have to sign a bond that they will work with the space agency for five years, or pay a large amount as penalty.

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