Indian Centre For Space Physics

The Indian Centre for Space Physics which is also abbreviated as ICSP is located in Kolkata, India. Indian Centre for Space Physics, Kolkata is a non-profit research organization that aims and is dedicated to carrying out advanced research in astrophysics, astronomy, and space science. Indian Centre for Space Physics, Kolkata falls out of the branch of institutions of the University of Calcutta and is also affiliated to the University of Calcutta. This institute was established in the year 1999 as a Research Institution and it is an Autonomous type of university. This university is located in Kolkata’s southern region. The president of the Indian Centre for Space Physics is Professor B.B. Bhattacharyya.

The new campus of ICSP Kolkata is being built behind Metro Cash and Carry on Eastern metropolitan bypass, and a 24-inch optical telescope is being installed in its Ionospheric and Earthquake Research Centre. Plus there already is a 10-inch telescope installed on the campus, which the school and college students use to do sky watching with on a regular basis. There are at the moment three branches located in different parts of West Bengal known as Malda, Coochbehar, and Midnapore, where people are constantly working in different fields of Astrophysics.

Indian Centre for Scape Physics mainly has four departments functioning on various branches of astrophysics and subjects related to space science. The four departments of ICSP are Astrochemistry & Astrobiology, Instrumentation for Space Exploration, Ionospheric Sciences, and High energy Astrophysics. Instrumentation for Space Exploration department concerns with space exploration by the means of balloon-borne detectors and ICSP is the pioneer in the field of low-cost exploration using lightweight payloads onboard weather balloons of near-earth space. The ionospheric sciences department on the other hand mainly studies the solar-terrestrial environment including ionosphere, thermosphere, Earth’s magnetosphere, solar disturbances, lithosphere, atmosphere, etc.

People here also work on other subjects like seismic – ionospheric precursors, long-term and transient solar activity, lithosphere-atmosphere-ionosphere coupling process, and ionospheric climatology using space-based VLF receiver and of course some groundwork. Then let’s come to High energy Astrophysics. This department only focuses, studies, and deals with Black Hole astrophysics and there are only two branches of black hole astrophysics that are theoretical and then the observational. Astrochemistry and Astrobiology researches study the reaction of chemicals and molecules in the universe and the interaction of the same with radiation, and the astrobiology branch focuses on the life and human body in outer space.

Indian Centre for Space Physics has done various research work as an individual institute, and also some collaborative research along with other institutes. This institute has collaborated with several international, and of course, national institutions and universities. Indian Centre for Space Physics, Kolkata is a member of the Erasmus Mundus joint Ph.D. programme funded by the European Union in Astronomy. Several scientists of ICSP have been trained at The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Italy. ICSP scientists also have been part of Antarctica expeditions and this institution has been visited near space in the balloon-borne science mission for over more than a hundred times.