ASTROSAT vs The Giant Hubble

A TV program on the legendary Hubble Space Telescope, HST (Hubble's Cosmic Journey, National Geographic), prompted me to write this piece on the recently launched Indian space telescope called ASTROSAT.  The purpose of Hubble Space Telescope is to break the barrier of 1-arc second seeing limit (full moon is about 1,800 arc-seconds across) from the ground which arises due to the atmospheric disturbances. NASA had achieved this by a mammoth effort of grinding a 2.4-meter glass to the curvature accuracy of 1/800,000 th of an inch and placing the school bus size object weighing 11,110-kg in 550-km orbit. ASTROSAT is India's  multi-wavelength telescope geared to look at the stellar objects primarily in UV, X-ray regions of the EM spectrum. In that TV program, the sweet voice of John Grunsfeld conveying his strong bond he had created in repairing the Hubble more than one time. Hubble is the most sophisticated optical experiment of humans in the space which has been working for 25-years and is going great guns.

In the back drop of this legacy; enters here,  the young-aspiring Indian beauty, ASTROSAT. In a typical Indian style of small-simple but effective, this telescope carries the same heritage as that of the Indian Chandrayaan-I (moon  mission) and MOM (Mars mission).  The idea of Indian scientists is to perform front line research from the existing experience in the country (X-ray astronomy); and hence majority of the hardware which went into is in the X-ray regime of EM spectrum. Considered to be a small size (in comparison to others) space telescope, it weighs 1513-kg at the time of lift off; it is basically a multi-wavelength telescope in a near equator orbit of around 650-kms radius.

Credit: DNAINDIA 

Apart from performing the deep field survey of the Universe in the UV region; ASTROSAT's wish list covers a wide range of phenomenon which are taking place in the universe:
a. studying the high energy processes of binary star system (neutron star-black hole),
b. estimation of magnetic field of neutron stars,
c. look for star birth region beyond our galaxy,
d. detecting the new briefly appearing bright x-ray sources in the sky.

If I could drift a bit beyond the popular level flow of this presentation; here is the list of payloads, the instruments which are very well thought over and put together by the host of Indian research institutes: TIFR, IIA, IUCAA, PRL and RRI.

Credit: ISRO

The details given above emphasises that the Optical and UV region is covered by a single detector; great efforts have been put to cover a very wide range of X-ray based 4-instruments.

As they say, the proof of the pudding is in eating.... the ASTROSAT has come out with a flying colours as soon as its eyes were made to open.

On 17th November, when the Swift observatory of NASA made its 1000th observation of Gamma Ray Burst (GRB), the ASTROSAT's CTZI indeed picked the same object and hence the sweet news of success to the eagerly waiting Indian scientists. The observations are reported here .

COMPARISON: 

Comparing Hubble Telescope with the ASTROSAT would be like comparing the legend Carl Lewis to that of a young athlete or in Indian terms, comparing Sachin Tendulkar to a Ranji trophy player. Without offending anyone, I must also add that both of these sport legends have indeed followed the same nascent stages. Hubble is a huge optical telescope to peek deep into the dark patches as seen from the ground telescopes. This was possible due to the avoidance of atmospheric disturbances. Where as, ASTROSAT is a multi-wavelength observing telescope; may not be huge in size but carries a state-of-the art X-ray detectors and a combined UV-Visible detector in aiming the similar deepest in-accessible "dark regions". With the success of operation of most of the detectors, it is only the time which is going to unravel the worthiness of all the hard work of Indian scientists. Best of luck INIDA..... 

Hubble Space Telescope

As has been referred here, Hubble is a legend in opening the eyes of humanity into the darkest regions of skies. Hubble basically is an optical observatory with an viewing ability of better than 0.1-arc second, having the 3-different types of sensors: i. Camera, ii. Spectrograph and iii. Photometer. A daring 5-space walks had fixed the flaw in achieving the intended goals of Hubble imagery; a total of 4-repairing attempts have kept the instrument in its best abilities.

Here is the summary of few greatest achievements of Hubble:

• Identification of dark matter which is otherwise invisible and comprises around 23% of the entire universe could be modelled into 3-D from the observations of Hubble
• Hubble discovered 2-new moons of Pluto : Nix, Hydra
• Identification of star forming regions, e.g. Orion nebula
• Picking up gamma ray bursts (GRB) and resolving the mystery around them
• Capturing the famous collision of comet Shoemaker-Levy with planet Jupiter
• Helped to identify the dark energy which is responsible for expansion of universe
• Super massive black holes may be lurking in many galaxies that have bulge of stars at the centre
• Observing the atmosphere of exo-planet (in Visible)

The list goes on.... and is still counting.....

The humble : ASTROSAT

The unique capabilities of ASTROSAT lies in its multi-wavelength capabilities of observing stellar objects.

• The Large Area X-Ray Proportional Counter (LAXPC) stands out among all the available space telescopes (RXTE, HEXTE, SAX); by offering almost 3-times larger area at 40-keV energy x-rays.
• The LAXPC will also offer best timing studies; helping the observers to study the strong gravity regions around neutron stars and stellar mass black holes
• LAXPC will also serve  as a complimentary instrument for the present/upcoming spectroscopic observations (Chandra, XMM-Newton, NuSTAR, ASTRO-H)
• Sensitive hard X-ray spectroscopy
• Wide spectral coverage : UV, 0.3-150 keV

RXTE : The Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer
HEXTE : High Energy Timing Experiment
SAX: Beppo SAX, Italian Dutch Satellite for X-ray astronomy
MOM: Mars Orbiter Mission

Water on Mars

After the discovery of bone dry moon to be holding traces of water molecules... Water on Mars means a lot to the human race. It is not a meagre scientific result where a 9-year old space craft revolving around Mars and 4-years old results have shown liquid water to be flowing during the summer on Mars; rather, these results have re-kindled new hopes of finding life on Mars, as per Michael Meyer, NASA's Mars Exploration Program. Of course, the intelligent, eager and inquisitive human's quest of leaving earth has found astronomical levels of adrenaline pumping into their blood streams.

This is the picture released by NASA which speaks tonnes of words on how the newly appearing streaks, called the recurring slope lineae (RSL)... held the secrets under their belly for so long that it took a smart under graduate student, Lujendra Ojha from Georgia Tech to figure out that these are actually hydrated salts which appear only when the ambiance reaches -23 C and above. In a way, the salts are helping the ice (water) to melt at much much lower temperatures; just as salt on roads here on Earth causes ice and snow to melt more rapidly.

Credit : NASA

SECRETS unravelled..

The dark streaks seem to be appearing in the summer and would again vanish as the temperature dips. It is only due to the long lasting mission Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and the versatile instruments it is carrying; that the keen observations of this undergrad student along with his team members that they found a way to unravel the secret beneath these streaks.

Ojha and his team first created a 3-D model (digital terrain map) utilizing the stereo information from  High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera of MRO. The image is draped with the spectral information from Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer (CRISM) of MRO. The spectrometer component of the overlaid image shows information about the hydrated salts at the multiple RSLs.

Ojha and his co-authors interpret the spectral signatures as caused by hydrated minerals called perchlorates. The hydrated salts most consistent with the chemical signatures are likely a mixture of magnesium perchlorate, magnesium chlorate and sodium perchlorate. This study of RSL detected perchlorates, now in hydrated form. This also is the first time perchlorates have been identified from orbit.

Another example of Dark Streaks on Garni crater..

Credit: NASA

Breakthrough Listen - Search for Aliens

"Is there an intelligent life beyond Earth? " this question has been bothering the human race as far as 19th century. The Serbian-American Scientist Nikola Tesla proposed to send signals to Martians (1890); he claimed to have received unusual signals, calling them to be from "another world". The project, Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, SETI, 1960 by Frank Drake, USA was to look for radio signals sent out by intelligent life in the universe.

The declaration of 100-million dollars fund by the Russian investor Yuri Milner with a surprise addition of Stephen Hawking in his team, the project "Breakthrough Initiatives" would certainly change the fate of SETI search. Milner, a physics graduate turned investor is known for turning coal into gold, with his investments bringing a new tide into the businesses (e.g. facebook, twitter, alibaba, xiomi, flipkart....); lets hope the same for SETI.

Credit: www.effmeride.it 

How is it done??
First strategy: Search for the radio signals in the nearby 100 million stars hoping that civilization living in their planetary system may be intelligent enough to have a radio active utility in their routine works, e.g. air traffic control or any other communications.

Since the past studies of SETI have strongly suggested that the radio signals from extra-terrestrial signals could come only from the far away sources and they could be extremely strong, an alternative hunt would also be planned.

Second strategy: Here the entire plane of milky-way galaxy (where we live) and the central zone will be studied in detail to cover more than 100-billion stars in the shallow region (meaning far away). Apart from this, the survey would also stare at 100-galaxies  comprising of 10s of trillions (1000-billion or million-million) of stars, each star having its own planetary system.

To accomplish the above said goals; the plan is to spend one-third of the funding in buying 20% of the 100-meter diameter Green Bank radio telescope at West Virginia and a substantial amount of time on Parkes 64-meter telescope in Australia for 10-years.

100-meter Green Bank radio telescope

Another one-third amount of funds are planned to develop very high sensitive receivers to listen to billions of narrow frequency channels in 1-10 GHz, a  region which covers best of the radio signal regimes which passes through the earth's atmosphere and also clean from the cosmic background . 

Breakthrough Listen will also be taking up observations in visible light region on the 2.4-meter Lick observatory's  planetary finder telescope. This would serve as an additional tool to support and confirm the region from where one hopes to pick POSITIVE signs of civilization.

Example: As per a rough estimate, the present studies (at Green Park) can pick up signals: "If an alien civilization living on a planet orbiting around any of the 1000 stars closest to us from a common air traffic kind of communication signals". 2. The optical signals monitored at Licks observatory would be able to pick 100-watts of light from the planets of stars which are within 4-light years away from ours.

Prominent SETI attempts:
A British radio astronomer, Antony Hewish and his post doc Jocelyn Bell studying the inter planetary scintillations of compact radio sources came across a set of radio sources displaying very regular and fast packet of signals. Unable to identify the source they went on to name them "little green men". Later the team went on to discover a new set sources called Pulsars; Anotny Hewish getting a noble prize (1974) for this discovery.

The famous ISRO-Balloon experiment, where the Indian scientists lead by Dr. Jayant Narlikar have successfully found bacteria in the stratosphere of earth, at an altitude of 20-40 kms. The three group of bacteria to be identified after the gene sequencing technique have been found for the first time (Reference). Though the Indian experiment may not fall under the LISTEN category, it does stand out as an outstanding effort of humans to reach out extra terrestrial life. India can certainly play a big role in this project; Milner goes on record to say that the idea of pumping this money is to instigate young minds towards science... is any body listening????

Bottom line!!
Though the present initiative may increase the SETI search by 100-times in the form of more sensitive tools (a rough estimate); it may take even generations to get to listen to the super civilization living away from our world. But surely enough... Milner has certainly initiated a giant step towards SETI...


Credit: 
Like to give credit to few press reports appearing in the internet after the declaration of Breakthrough Initiatives project on 20th July at the Royal Society, London, particularly to a good piece of article appearing in the Sky and Telescope by Alan MacRobert.

NEW HORIZONS

Key words: New Horizons, Alan Stern

The NASA page of New Horizons says.... 10-Years..,5- Billion kms; truly the human aspirations are racing towards the edge of solar system with an astounding speeds of 80,000 km/hour. To be able to reach Pluto, the New Horizons space craft has to take a slingshot from the giant planet Jupiter. The scientists are going to peek into the new frozen world of Pluto on 14th July 2015 at a distance of just around 12,500 kms having to view football size images with 48-meter resolution. Where as, after its discovery in 1930, Pluto has just been a dot to the best possible astronomical observations from earth, except for few (10-12) pixel across image appearing in the Hubble Space Telescope in 90s. Why are the scientists so excited???  they say.... they have no idea.. may be it is the thickest atmosphere or gaseous jets streaming out.... anything.... so little is known.

New Horizons, Credit : NASA, 

New Horizons (NH).. an unique attempt?
Voyager-1 (Sept-1977) which has crossed the solar system now, had opted for Titan (Saturn's moon) as a compromise to bypass Pluto's flyby. Voyager-2 (Aug-1977) never had a trajectory to flyby Pluto. Then comes... New Horizons (2006)... fully geared to explore this dark world at its gory details. NH got the best opportunity to catch up with the celestial windows to be able to sling shot towards Pluto before the planet drifts further away and the atmosphere it holds getting frozen. As per the inspirational posts from Alan Stern, PI, that every care has been taken to avoid any collision the space craft may suffer due to the un known world around Pluto. "It was a relentless effort of around 2,500 NASA employees's effort that is going take us into these unknown worlds" says Alan Stern.

The Space craft:

To quote NASA, the piano sized space craft weighs 478 kilograms, with the lead role taken by the Southwest Research Institute, APL-JHU and contributions coming from (GSFC, JPL, KSFC, UC, Stanford...) many other institutions, to say a typical American heritage. Its a technological marvel running on a single radio-isotope thermoelectric generator of 200W capacity provided by a 11-kg Plutonium dioxide. Most of the instruments working at an average power of 5W (~ night lamp) and with the data being transmitted via 2.1-m antenna, a must for an object 5-billion kms away and the communication taking almost 9+ hours both ways. 

Instruments, Credit: NASA

Instruments:
The 7-instruments are like gems, hand picked with 10s of deliberations carried to get the maximum from the un-known worlds. In my priority list:
1. LORRI, the telescope/camera comes first. Dubbed as the hawk eyes of New Horizons, it is basically a black and white digital camera with a 20-cm telescope, but built to work in a hostile cold environment. On 14th July, LORRI will be beaming football size images with an unprecedented 50-meter resolution, a life time opportunity for all the planetary scientists. 
2. RALPH, though called as the "main eye", but a complex mixture of instruments comprising of three panchromatic imagers, four color imagers and a spectrograph. It will offer an abundance information on surface geology, morphology and thermal features.
3. ALICE is an imaging UV spectrometer to study the composition of Pluto's atmosphere. A smart baby with a built-in telescope and a huge spectral coverage to study ionic to neutral species.
4. REX, a smart idea of employing occultation technique (looking down to earth's DSN signals via the target atmospheres) to measure pressure, temperature of atmospheres of Pluot and Charon.
5. SWAP, to measure solar wind around Pluto, 6. PEPSSI to look for energetic particles, last but not the least 7. SDC a student dust counter, developed by the students to measure microscopic dust grains produced by the collision among asteroids, comets and KBOs.

Pluto Picture of the Day..... (updated daily...)

Mountain range discovered by NH on 14th July in the Tombough region from a distance of 77,000 km Credit: NASA.

Another secret of Pluto revealed, as NH was moving past Pluto, it captured the haze around Pluto extending to 130 km. Credit: NASA.

Philae vs. MIP (Moon Impact Probe)

Key words: Philae, Rosetta, Moon Impact Probe, Chandrayaan-I

Today (14th Nov., 2014), exactly six years ago "the messenger from India" (as president Kalam called it) Moon Impact Probe had crash landed near Shackleton crater, very close to the south pole of the moon. While 2-days ago we hear about Philae probe of Rosetta space craft of ESA landing on the Comet P67 and hence the title of this post; by no mean there could be any other analogy in these missions. Let me narrate few amazing facts about Philae then will switch over to my own personal experiences as a core-science team member of Moon Impact Probe mission in Chandrayaan-I.

Philae:

Credit : ESA

The team of Rosetta waited for almost 10-years in chasing the P67 comet before they could send 100-kg Philae to set its foot on the tiny nucleus which was measuring just around 4-km. The mind boggling numbers of 500-million km journey lasting 10-years and sailing along side the elusive comet's nucleus at a distance of few-100s of kms  with a speed of 64,000 km/hr were all truly hair raising statements.

On 12th Novemeber, 2014, the time had just been ripe for the team Rosetta to fire the Philae weighing 100-kgs and would take around 8-hours to be ready to land on the nucleus. As it reaches the nucleus of the Comet, Philae would fire 2-harpoons and would tag itself onto the soft surface. The press reports (from ESA officials) confirm that the Philae has in fact bounced twice and later got settled at location which is not known for sure as of today (14th Nov., 2014); however finds itself in a shadow of a cliff shown below.

Credit: ESA

Though the fully charged battery of Philae would permit its 9-instruments to operate for 56-hours; but the recharging would take much longer than the expected time as the present location would offer only an hour of sunlight for the solar panels to charge the battery; this is certainly not the dead end, as the comet itself would offer its "seasons" where the same location could hope to get much more sun exposure in the future. It is indeed a moment of pride for the entire humanity that the ESA has achieved for the first time on being on a comet. The scientists are upbeat about Philae (though landing on 2-legs, out of three) being very healthy as far as running of their proposed battery of experiments are concerned. Any further manoeuvrability need to be done with extreme care as this may lead to dislodging of the probe from the surface itself. Why... because the the 100-kg Philae would weigh just around 1-gram due to a reduction of gravitational pull of P67 of the order of 100000 less as compared to earth.


Moon Impact Probe (MIP):

Mission: While Phiale's mission is just like a scene picked from a Hollywood movie; Moon Impact Probe was a hard work of a small group of scientists from southern tip of India and their aim was ONLY to drop a 30-kg mass on the southern tip of moon. The mother space craft (red), Chandrayaan-I would re-orient to accommodate MIP separation. During this time the MIP (green) would be detached and in a "pre-programmed" sequence would fire de-orbit motor to reduce the forward velocity component while a set of thrusters fitted on the side would spin-up the probe to attain a stable descent journey. The selected target was close to the Malapert Mountain near the south pole of the moon.

MIP mission; Credit: ISRO

The MIP mission as it was called in the Chandrayaan-I project was the brain child of President Kalam, as per his vision "let there be a messenger reaching moon from the Indian soil". This idea was to be realised at ISRO's Vikram Sarabha Space Center, VSSC. Traditionally at ISRO's VSSC; it has been the hub of developing and realising the rockets, while the idea of MIP which comprises of an autonomous power, communication and instruments can almost be treated as a stand alone space craft. This was a unique experience for the entire group of MIP developers. The objective of MIP was a "Technology Demonstration" which means all other issues (science) would take a back seat; however, the development of a science instrument (CHACE) in this mission with its members having least amount of experience were entertained by the core group of scientists; which allowed us to pull-off one of the most sensitive instrument (CHACE) to study the nearest heavenly body. The plan: the MIP a cuboid of 1/2-meter size weighing around 30-kg would be detached from the mother space craft in the very first opportunity of Chandrayaan-I achieving its 100-km polar orbit.

Moon Impact Probe; Credit : VSSC-ISRO

The MIP would carry 3-experiments during its approximate 22-minutes descend journey. 1. CHACE, (link) the mass spectrometer would sample the nearby ambiance in 1-100 atomic mass range, 2. Color Camera would take pictures and 3. Radar altimeter would measure the distance from the lunar ground. Details of CHACE are narrated here.

It was on 14th November, 2008 around 8.22 pm IST that we were all waiting for the confirmatory signal from MIP which would actually cease to exist (meaning "die down"). It indeed happened and the sacrifice of MIP (that is crash landing) has brought immense wealth of data. The color camera sent stunning pictures as MIP was descending; while CHACE spectrometer measured almost a dozen gaseous species with the peak at 18 representing water standing very very tall indicating the presence of water unambiguously.

MIP landing; Credit : SAC, ISRO

It was no ordinary feat for the MIP team members to design and develop a probe from scratch in a span of just around 4-years and achieve an amazing piece of success in the form of landing the probe within 2-kms of intended location.

Comet Siding Spring visit of Mars

The space enthusiasts around the globe were preparing for an exciting moment: on how the two visitors from earth would be able to make it to planet Mars in the 3rd week of September. The team at NASA was quite confident on their 485 million dollars worth baby, MAVEN; while the Indian-MOM ($ 75-millions) was carrying ONE billion hopes to be able become the FIRST country to make it on their first attempt to planet Mars. Suddenly the focus has shifted to an event which would occur a month later, truely a Cosmic Spectacle which is going to take place if you were to be on Mars on Oct.19th. The comet Siding Spring will be zipping past almost at a distance of 1/3rd of that of earth-moon.

Comet on MARS (artist's view)
Credit : Viral Global news 

When the Indian Mars Orbiter Mission, MOM was getting ready; there were few whispers around on the suspected visit of an intruder on Mars (indicating whether the mission should go ahead ???) ; credit to the think tank of ISRO that they went on record to announce that the mission is ON. In one of my earlier posts (link), on my personal behalf I had predicted that even if the comet were to make it; this would offer a life time opportunity to study this event. This is precisely what has been the mood all around the globe today.

What is the fuss all about this event:

Orbiters, Rovers of NASA on MARS
Credit : NASA

It is a rare among rare opportunity that the space scientists would be getting to study a comet at such a close range. Siding Spring, a long period comet making its visit for the first time to the solar system has stirred huge interest among scientists and a common man. The good news: as per recently carried out modelling study (JPL and few other university teams) on comet's path around the solar system, the comet's nucleus with a size of around 2-kms will be moving within a distance of 132,000 kms from the planet; even then it is 17-times closer than the nearest recorded comet (L1 Lexell, 1780) in history. At this distance both the ion-tail and the dust tail is going to miss the Mars. The bad news: is all due to a trail of dust particles which would be moving at a very high relative speed of around 57-kms per second during the closest visit of this comet; this would start 90-minutes before and would be lasting for another 20-minutes of actual passing time. As per the estimate of scientists, at these speeds even a tiny dust particle of half millimeter size could cause appreciable damage; "essentially they pierce the skin of any satellite; they would be like bullets, out there" quoted by Rich Zurek of JPL. Presently there are two orbiters: Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and two rovers: Opportunity, Curiosity of NASA while one orbiter from ESA: Mars Express. The fuss is all due to the devastating effects this unexpected visitor to Mars would be causing; but... hey.. hang on.. this has now become a talking point on every possible popular scientific forum... because the fear of damage to the probes is turning into excitement of observing this unique phenomenon.

Ducking behind Mars:

Credit: NASA

The scientists at NASA have already come up with a plan of taking their orbiters behind the Mars planet during the passing-by phase of the trail of cometry particles. Both the orbiters of NASA have gone through the first level of orbit correction; they have also indicated that the newly arriving MAVEN would also be placed in an appropriate orbit to be placed itself behind the planet during the comet's transit. While the Indian team at ISRO is yet to make an official announcement to this effect.  However, the scientists at NASA believe that the rovers on the ground will be under least amount of facing any kind of hazard and hence have not opted any protective measures.

Observations for the spectacle:

Comet tails: explained
Credit : NASA

Though this may lead to a technical discussion (and hence elaborations are avoided); the indications leading us to believe that the NASA team has made elaborate arrangements in terms of preparing the suitable instruments on their orbiters and rovers to be ready for the cosmic spectacle to study the : comet/coma as such, coma-mars atmosphere interaction and also formation of Martian Aurora which may occur due to the interaction of coma and higher part of Martian atmosphere, as pointed out by David Brian, LASP, Univ of Colorado. Last but not the least, we, here in India will also be cheering for the MOM to catch up with the huge amount of opportunities which are thrown open during the nature's display of fire show.

Curious observation (Author's take) :

DEIMOS: images taken by MRO
Credit : NASA

The object which is furthermost away to planet Mars and still part of it is Deimos, the second moon, is going to take a heavy beating on October the 19th. Poor Deimos with a diameter of around 13-km which has been spending very quite time all around, but situated around 23,000 km from Mars would be awake to a violent shower of particles (bullets) both neutral and ions. It will be interesting to note the fate of this object which is having a porous regolith (1.47 gm/cm3) .

Indian Universities - Rankings

Just like the status of India in the world of football (SOCCER, yet to fly their flag @FIFA); the Indian universities are yet to make any mark in the academic world. Why.. why.. why is it that none of the Indian academic institutes have made it to appear in world's top 200 rankings; consistently in the past 3-years. The idea of this post is to bring out the bare facts and also to offer my own personal views for this pathetic show in the academic arena. Arena???, is it a good word, are we saying that the academicians need to be in a race; while many people shrug aside this topic calling it to be a meager "rat race". No, its a measure of where does the institution stands in imparting education and performing research, in a way it reflects on the worthiness of everything; YES, it is indeed to make one realize whether the students one trains, after all have to enter the ARENA and hence the correct word.

Ranking: Weightage Factors
Credit : TIMES higher education rankings

As we wind up the year 2013 (today being the last day); we learned 2-reports, first, the Indian Universities faring badly among the BRICS countries; next, a miserable performance among the World Rankings. Lets analyze the first work done by the TIMES higher education UK group in gauging the academic institutions among the FIVE (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) major emerging national economies. The assessment seems to have been based on four major issues (complete details):  While 1. teaching (30%), 2. research (30%), 3. citations (30%) carry a large chunk, the remaining 10% is calculated upon the industry income and international outlook. In addition, there were 13-carefully calibrated performance indicators; trusted by students, academicians and industry and governments. There is a minimum bar of around 200-published papers an year starting from 2007 and the institutions must teach undergraduate programs; with few exceptions permitted.

Coming back to what Indian universities have done among BRICS: while China grabbed 4-slots among the top-10 (including 1st, 2nd); Punjab University was placed at rank-13 (we are NOT averse to this number!!). The other institute to represent India is IIT-Khargapur standing long long away at 30. There are 6-more institutes (so, 8-among 50) within the 50-bracket; the notable one being Jadavpur university at 47 and Aligarh at 50.

What can we say about this performance:
Lets get some opinion from Phil Batey, editor, Times Education Higher Rankings, UK; as per his interview appearing in the Hindu, he attributes the no.1 slot for Peiking university is primarily due to research impact and industry income along with an excellent teaching credentials. As per Batey, the Chinese government made a significant effort starting from 1990 and pushed for a few number of highly specialized universities into world class level by pouring a significant amount of grants in developing infrastructure and research facilities (Is anybody listening ???). The decision, a political, but very aggressively followed in attracting the reverse brain drain by offering a variety of incentives to the students, faculty coming back to their motherland. While the Punjab university seems to have done exceptionally well due to their research program; which is "globally potential". Commenting on the poor performance of IITs, Batey says IITs lag on research front. He also mentions very categorically that the funds flow towards education is poor in India and hence a poor set of infrastructure in all the educational institutes. Some other good universities were not appearing in the list as they had not participated in their ranking procedures (e.g. Delhi University).

My views:
The simple logic of "what you sow is what you reap" is applicable. As Mr. Batey pointed out, the other developing countries who have made it big are the ones who have spent an enormous amount. It is interesting to come up with the actual numbers spend based on GDP among the BRICS. Though the recruitment procedures are very fair at the central universities and at the IITs in attracting bright researchers from abroad and within the country; what has been noticed is that of terrible deterioration in the research performance of these young faculty after joining. It is absolutely clear that the major reason behind this phenomenon is due to poor infrastructure on pursuing research mixed with many other non-academic reasons which will kill the remaining enthusiasm. While, the lack of funding is playing a detrimental role in the fall of quality research in India, the drying up of faculty strength is another crucial factor in the dwindling scenario of university output. There is a huge uncertainty in the governments to last their 5-year terms; and hence very few long term plans are envisaged in setting up of a esteemed places of higher education.

Can we not identify universities of excellence which can offer world class teaching along with cutting edge research, the ISERS is a good move in this direction. Let us reinforce IITs on their research front; let there be few faculty who are taking less burden of teaching, but performing research alone (assessed by an independent body). No point in spending a fortune on attracting one type of fellowship (calling noble laureates); instead we can call many without the tag. Let there not be an aversion on PRIVATE universities (they are the ones who sent the first probe into the space), if they are bringing competitiveness let us have them into the foray; after all the new entrants need to be wary; not the other way round.

On the occasion of 60th formation day of UGC, Prof. C. Raj Kumar, vice chancellor of  O.P. Jindal Global university has come with a good discussion (the Hindu) on "Building better Universities". While very first table showcases a pathetic show of Indian universities NOT appearing in the top-200 ranks all along the the years 2011, 2012 and 2013; at the same time China, Japan and South Korea taking 4-5 slots on an average among the lists of various bench markings. Raj Kumar has gone in greater depth of the working model of UGC; his comment " The current framework that require universities to be constantly regulated by laws, rules, regulations, guidelines and policies set by the government and the regulatory bodies have not produced the best results".  He emphasized on the issues of quality and accountability which need to be ensured by the regulating body (read UGC). As per this article; India in the pursuit of enhancing the education base (Gross Enrollment Ratio) has some how lost in spending on the research and scholarships.

Bottom line,   Issues to be debated: 

• How can we enhance investment in Higher education
• Better ways and means to attract the reverse brain drain
• Opening the gates for the foreign players (less averse to Private parties)
• With the given situation; how to improve the standards (lessons from Punjab Univ.)
• Where should the buck be stopping?? ... Student - Faculty - VC- UGC...........
• Lack of Industry participation in research
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N.B.: Here is the: Indian Universities World Rankings 


Another blow to the Indian Educational system; Sept-2014
Here is another news appearing just now : LINK, that the findings of QS-World University Ranking system finds IIT-Bombay holding the best representation from India.... at 222; while few universities (Delhi Univ., Calcutta Univ.) managing to be in the 420-440 range.

Times Ranking-2015... India improves; Dec-2014
India does well... on the expected lines; their top research institute, IISc (Indian Institute of Science) grabs 25th rank into the BRICS league... here are the other Indian institutes....

Credit : Times of India

QS Rankings -2015 by subject:
Indian universities stood up in the subject-wise rankings brought out by the same agency (reference: QS Rankings) where Indian institutions failed miserably as a whole.

Listed here are the 9-institutions from India, which grabbed under-100 rankings subject wise..

1. IIT Bombay:  Art & design, computer science, & information systems, engineering-chemical, civin & structural, electrical & electronic, mechanical, aeronautical & manufacturing, materials science, statistcs & operational research  

2. IIT Delhi:  Computer science & information systems, engineering-chemical, civil stuctural, electrical & electronic, mechanical, aeronautical & manufacturing  

3. IIT Kharagpur:  Engineering-civil & structural, mechanical, aeronautical & manufacturing, material science

4. IIT Madras:  Engineering-civil &structural, electrical & electronic, mechanical, aeronautical & manufacturing  

5. Indian Institute of Science:  Electrical & electronic, materials science  

6. IIT Kanpur:  Statistics & operational research  

7. Jawaharlal Nehru University:  Sociology  

8.Shanmugha Arts Science Technology:  Art & design 

9. University of Delhi:  Development studies