The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has launched a Space Technology Incubation Centre at the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Jalandhar, Punjab. This is the second Space Technology Incubation Centre (S-TIC) in the country. The first S-TIC was launched in NIT Agartala in September 2018. It was inaugurated by Dr K Sivan, chairperson, ISRO.
The centre is expected to bring the industry, academia and ISRO triad under one umbrella to contribute towards the research and development (R&D) initiatives relevant to Indian Space Programme.
The S-TIC concept is conceived with one selected major academic institute taking the lead role in a particular region and providing opportunities for final year graduate, postgraduate and research scholars. The research outcome of these students will be translated into a proof of concept or prototype through industries tied up with the S-TIC through ISRO.
The qualification and validation of these products will be carried out in the labs of ISRO. Once qualified, there will be a buyback agreement of this product for future programmes of ISRO thereby eliminating the marketing effort. The first S-TIC was inaugurated at NIT Agartala on September 18, 2018 and it started functioning.
Meanwhile, ISRO has also sought applications from Indian institutes and universities to set up ISRO chairs.
ISRO in a statement has said that it aims to set-up six ISRO Research Chairs, one each in the six geographically distributed zones of India — North, South, East, West, Central India and North East regions of the country.
