Friday, July 8 2005 14:59 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Bangalore: A Vision document on astronomy and astrophysics has recommended for a National Centre for Space Sciences and Instrumentation. This is to provide for India's participation in big international ventures in astronomy.

Pointing out that a "serious" lacuna in Indian astronomy is instrumentation and detector development, the document said the centre would serve the needs of astronomy, atmospheric sciences, ocean studies and aeronomy. It would be advantageous to set up the Centre under the Indian Space Research Organisation to avoid 'duplication of major facilities', said, "A Decadal Vision Document" a 134 page document on Astronomy and Astrophysics of Indian Academy of Sciences, released by the Academy President T V Ramakrishnan.

The mandate of the Centre should include catalysing space research, collaborating with major academic institutions, establishing working links with leading R&D labs like CSIR and IIT's, pursuing R&D work related to future needs and establishing close links with similar centres in other nations. Observing that while indigenous efforts were absolutely essential for science to take root and build a sizeable scientific community, it emphasised, "One must be aware of the ever widening gap between state-of-the-art facilities abroad and what we can realistically hope to have in India". "Indeed the next generation facilities that are being planned as so expensive that even the United States of America cannot raise the required resources", it said. Stressing that multinational collaboration is the new paradigm in big science, it said, "Therefore, we in India, too, have no option but to participate in such international ventures".