Tuesday, July 12 2005 13:10 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: Indian astronomers have begun their joint venture with their Russian counterparts to put an Indian scientific payload (RT-2) on Russian satellite -- complex orbital observations near-earth of activity of sun -- scheduled to be launched in 2007.

According to Principal Investigator of RT-2 of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) Prof A R Rao, intense activities have been initiated to realise an Indian scientific payload (RT-2) for the complex orbital observations of the activity of the sun near earth (coronas-photon).

The Russian satellite will be launched from Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Northern Russia in late 2007, he said.

"The Indian team has agreed to deliver the payload in two stages, keeping in view the launch schedule of the coronas-photon Russian satellite," Rao said. He also added that the engineering model would be delivered to the Russian satellite team by June 2006 and the flight model by December 2006.

A Russian team of experts, headed by Dr Yu D Kotov of Moscow, engineering physics institute (principal investigator of coronas-photon project), is in India and meeting scientists from TIFR and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to discuss the technical requirements, specifically the issues related to the satellite interface of the Indian payload RT-2, Rao said.

The multi-national collaborative satellite will carry a host of scientific payloads primarily to study the disturbed and eruptive behaviour of the sun and the interaction of solar particles and electromagnetic radiations with the earth's atmosphere and ionosphere, Kotov said.