A science meet to commemorate one year of AstroSat in orbit

India’s first dedicated Astronomy satellite, AstroSat, completed its first year of successful operation on Sept 28, 2016. Towards this, a one day meeting was organised at Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune on Thursday, Sept 29, 2016, to highlight the technical and scientific achievements of this Space Observatory.

Chairman, ISRO dedicated the AstroSat Science Support Cell hosted at IUCAA (http://astrosat-ssc.iucaa.in/) and delivered the keynote address. This was followed by an official release of AstroSat outreach resources such as posters.

The first scientific results and the future scope of the satellite were presented followed by a panel discussion on the future of Indian Space Astronomy. The meeting was attended by several dignitaries from ISRO and other institutes from all over the country who have been involved with AstroSat.

During this period of one year, the spacecraft has orbited the earth more than 5400 times and has executed 343 individual pointings to 141 different cosmic sources. The observed data are being routinely downloaded at the Indian Space Science Data Centre (ISSDC) at every visible pass and are being processed at the Payload Operation Centres.

October 1, 2016 will mark the beginning of the Open Phase of the observatory. Available observing time over the subsequent six-month period (Cycle A02: October 2016-March 2017) was oversubscribed by a factor of six in observing proposals received from researchers of 59 different institutions. The rigorous process of selection of proposals and their scheduling has been completed and AstroSat is now ready to embark on the Open Phase observations.