ISRO’s Space Tech Incubation Center at NIT Rourkela to promote R&D in four states

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will be establishing a ‘Space Technology Incubation Center (S-TIC) at the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela to carry out research, product, prototype development in space technology and applications. This Centre will enable start-ups to build applications and products that could be used in the country’s future space missions. 

NIT Rourkela will provide its state-of-the-art laboratories, facilities and expert faculty to meet these objectives. The upcoming centre will promote startups, capacity-building, innovations and research in Space Technology in the States of Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand, besides the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

The MoU on S-TIC, between ISRO and NIT Rourkela, was virtually signed on Thursday (March 18). This collaboration with ISRO will open up new opportunities for research & development as well as space start-ups. It will also offer a great opportunity for academia to collaborate with industries and contribute to this Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan in the Space Technology sector initiated by ISRO.

Commending NIT Rourkela on this occasion, Dr K Sivan, Chairman, ISRO and Secretary Department of Space, Government of India, highlighted that space technology-related research and the products from the S-TIC will be utilised in future Space missions and will help nation-building through ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan’ in space technology and applications domain. He added that students and research scholars will execute real projects given by ISRO of NIT Rourkela taking guidance from expert faculties, mentors from ISRO and relevant industries. 

ISRO will provide an annual Grant-in-Aid of Rs 2 crore for a period of up to two years to NIT Rourkela, as seed money for setting up the S-TIC. This fund would be utilised for facility augmentation, to carry out the research projects and product development taken from ISRO. NIT Rourkela will provide the required infrastructure inside its academic campus under the supervision of Prof. Susmita Das from NIT Rourkela.