Indian astrophysicist Prahlad Chandra Agrawal, who has been concerned in main Indian house programmes together with the AstroSat house telescope and the Chandrayaan 1 lunar mission, has been awarded the 2024 COSPAR Harrie Massey Prize.
Mr. Agrawal obtained the award on the opening ceremony of the forty fifth COSPAR Scientific Meeting in Busan, South Korea, on July 15, 2024.
The award recognises excellent contributions to the event of house analysis, particularly via a management position. Along with a medal and a quotation, the laureate receives the honour of getting a minor planet named after her or him, on this case 20064 Prahladagrawal.
Mr Agrawal, 83, was the principal investigator of India’s first multi-wavelength house telescope, AstroSat, which was launched by the Indian Area Analysis Organisation (ISRO) on September 28, 2015.
Authorized by the Division of Science and Know-how in 2004, AstroSat was constructed on a finances of Rs 400 crore. It has the distinctive capacity to view celestial objects in a number of wavelengths on the similar time, because of its array of 4 aligned devices and an X-ray sky monitor.
It was developed in collaboration between Tata Institute of Basic Analysis (TIFR), Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru, and ISRO’s UR Rao Satellite tv for pc Centre.
AstroSat, which is scheduled to function for 5 years, continues to generate helpful information, not too long ago leading to a big discovery: a binary black gap system. AstroSat observations have been cited in additional than 500 scientific papers and have led to greater than 30 doctoral theses. AstroSat information is open supply and accessible to researchers worldwide.
Dr. Agrawal is a former Senior Lecturer within the Division of Area Physics at TIFR.
Following postdoctoral stays on the California Institute of Know-how (Caltech) and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he contributed to the event of NASA’s HEAO-1 A4 instrument. He subsequently led the crew that developed the Indian X-ray Astronomy Experiment on board the IRS P-3 satellite tv for pc, launched in March 1996.
Dr. Agrawal was a member of the Lunar Working Group arrange by ISRO to organize the undertaking report for India’s first lunar mission, Chandrayaan 1.
He has served as a member or chairman of the Boards of Administrators of top-level establishments, together with the IIAp, the Aryabhata Analysis Institute of Observational Sciences, and the Interuniversity Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics.
In his acceptance speech, Dr Agrawal thanked his mentor and former TIFR Director BV Sreekantan and former ISRO Chairman Ok. Kasturirangan for making this milestone in India’s house programme potential.
