A centre of excellence specialising in reading space weather conditions to help air traffic on polar routes would come up here by the middle of this year, the first of its kind in the country.
"It will be a centre of excellence in space sciences. The centre’s main thrust will be on areas of space weather especially weather in the solar system and gravitational physics," its coordinator, scientist Dibyendu Nandi told PTI here.
Besides air traffic on polar routes, the centre would help in the functioning of GPS networks and mobile satellites placed in space.
Nandi said coronal mass ejections (CME) and solar flares were two kinds of storms originating from the sun which exposed flights to immense amounts of radiation over polar regions. Several commercial flights from south Asia, Europe and north America flew over the polar regions to cut short time and distance.
Nandi said if the weather in the solar system was not good it would impact the functioning of satellites, which in turn would have an adverse effect on the GPS system and mobile networks.
The centre, approved by the Union HRD ministry, would come up at the Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research (IISER) campus. The ministry has sanctioned Rs four crore for it.