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Belgium has expressed interest in continuing with the existing bilateral engagement with India in the field of astronomy. The 330-membered Belgian contingent that visited India last week termed it as another “priority sector” along with trade, defence and business.
India’s Department and Science and Technology and the Belgian Science Policy Office have been jointly running the Belgo-Indian Network for Astronomy and Astrophysics research project for a decade. This project aims to make optimum use of all the Belgium-made telescopes currently operational in India, including the 3.6-metre Devasthal Optical Telescope, the 4-metre International Liquid Mirror Telescope, and the 2.5-metre telescope at Isro’s Physical Research Laboratory’s Mt Abu Observatory.
Officials of the two countries also spoke about promoting scientific collaborations in this field, and most importantly, on developing the National Large Solar Telescope (NLST) and National Large Optical-IR Telescope (NLOT), both planned in Ladakh.
The interaction between the officials of the two countries held in New Delhi also touched upon how the representatives of the astronomy communities would meet and explore opportunities to deepen their collaborations on some of India’s newest space and astronomy missions or projects, including the NLST.
The half-day discussion spanned several topics, including Belgian collaboration with the Indian space industry, the development of optical instrumentation, addressing the space debris issue, the Aditya L1 mission, and working to deepen collaborations on other existing telescopes, including the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope, the Himalayan Chandra Telescope, Vinu Bapu Observatory, and the proposed and the National Large Optical and IR Telescope (NLOT), the 10-metre telescope and India’s first large optical-IR telescope. Both NLST and NLOT will be owned and operated by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics and Ladakh is said to be best suited for conducting optical and near-infrared observations.
“The meeting highlighted the Belgian contribution and efforts, and scientist and student exchanges over the past several years. The Belgians expressed interest in working on NLST. They are open to building instruments and doing science jointly with India,” Dipankar Banerjee, solar physicist and director, Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram, told The Indian Express. He was one of the attendees representing India.
The Indo-Belgium meeting also underscored how the collaboration between the two countries had led to increased networking and the establishment of scientific relations between scientists and students from both countries.
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