Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma laid the foundation stone for ISRO’s ISTRAC Advanced Radar Research Facility at Chandrapur in Kamrup Metropolitan district on 21 September 2026. The new centre, the first space surveillance facility in Northeast India, is being built under ISRO’s NETRA programme to track objects in orbit. Its first cloud-research radar will become operational by February 2027, marking a major expansion of national space infrastructure into the east.
What Is ISTRAC?
ISTRAC stands for the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network. It is the ground network of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) that tracks satellites and launch vehicles, receives data from them and sends commands to control them from launch lift off to end of mission.
ISTRAC was established on 6 September 1976 and is headquartered at Peenya in Bengaluru, Karnataka. The network runs mission operations for all operational remote sensing and scientific satellites in low earth orbit. It provides Telemetry, Tracking and Command (TTC) support, which means it collects health data from satellites, finds their exact position in orbit and uplinks control instructions.
Over the years, the mandate of ISTRAC has grown well beyond routine satellite control. ISTRAC now supports deep space missions, develops radar systems for launch vehicle tracking and weather study, operates the ground segment for the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System and provides search and rescue and disaster management services. It has built a global chain of ground stations at Bengaluru, Lucknow, Sriharikota, Thiruvananthapuram, Port Blair, Mauritius, Brunei, Biak in Indonesia and Troll and Svalbard along with the Deep Space Network stations at Byalalu near Bengaluru.
What Is Project NETRA?
Project NETRA stands for the Network for Space Object Tracking and Analysis. It is ISRO’s indigenous space situational awareness programme that monitors orbital debris and other objects to protect active Indian satellites from collisions through radars, telescopes and a central control centre.
ISRO started Project NETRA in September 2019 with an initial outlay of ₹400 crore. The sanctioned cost of the project now stands at ₹509.01 crore, with cumulative spending of ₹67.77 crore reported up to February 2026. The programme was created because India depended largely on public data from the United States Space Command, while the number of Indian satellites and global mega constellations kept rising. In 2021 alone, ISRO had to carry out 19 collision avoidance manoeuvres, up from only three in 2015.
The heart of Project NETRA is the ISRO Space Situational Awareness Control Centre inside the ISTRAC campus at Peenya in Bengaluru. The control centre was inaugurated on 14 December 2020 and functions as the hub for all space tracking work in India. It is operated by the Directorate of Space Situational Awareness and Management (DSSAM). The centre collects data from radars and telescopes, fixes orbits, builds a catalogue of objects, predicts close approaches and issues alerts for collision avoidance and atmospheric re entry.
Project NETRA links three types of assets. The first is radar, including the Multi Object Tracking Radar (MOTR) commissioned at Sriharikota in 2015 and the new phased array radar planned at Chandrapur. The second is an optical telescope network at Ponmudi, Mount Abu and Leh and Hanle in Ladakh, which can see faint objects up to magnitude 14. Together, these sensors can spot objects as small as 10 cm in low earth orbit up to a range of about 3,400 km, with a long term goal to watch the geostationary belt at 36,000 km where communication satellites work.
This space tracking NETRA should not be confused with the Indian Air Force airborne early warning system of the same name. The airborne NETRA is a radar aircraft developed for air defence, while ISRO’s NETRA watches objects in outer space.
The New Facility at Chandrapur in Assam
The ISTRAC Advanced Radar Research Facility (IARRF) is coming up at Chandrapur in Kamrup Metropolitan district, near Guwahati. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma performed the Bhumi Pujan and laid the foundation stone on 21 September 2026 in the presence of ISRO Chairman V. Narayanan and senior ISTRAC officials. The Assam government has allotted about 70 acres of land for the project at a site that earlier housed a thermal power plant.
The Chandrapur centre is described as the first space surveillance facility in Northeast India. The Chief Minister said Assam had premier institutions like an IIT, an IIM, an AIIMS and central universities but had a gap in space science, and the new facility fills that gap. He thanked the central leadership for choosing Assam and asked the people of Chandrapur to support scientists and officials during construction. He also said students and youth in Assam must be linked more closely with science, technology and space research to build a self reliant state.
ISRO Chairman V. Narayanan, who took charge as Secretary of the Department of Space and Chairman of ISRO on 13 January 2025 (as of September 2026), called the Chandrapur facility world class. He said it will strengthen India’s space situational awareness and support advanced scientific research. ISTRAC officials said the centre will host advanced radar systems and optical facilities in phases and will be remotely linked to the NETRA control centre in Bengaluru for orbit calculation and alerts.
Cloud-Research Radar by February 2027
The first instrument at Chandrapur will be a cloud-research radar. ISRO has said the radar is already ready and will be commissioned before the end of February 2027. The system will study cloud patterns and support research and development in atmospheric science.
Two more important radars, including the dedicated space object tracking phased array radar, are expected to follow within about one and a half years. Once fully built, the Chandrapur complex will track satellites, debris and other objects passing over the eastern sky, a region where India earlier had limited ground coverage. This eastern coverage is valuable because many polar and low earth orbit satellites pass over the Northeast, and continuous tracking improves orbit accuracy and warning time.
Why Space Tracking Matters for India
Space around Earth is getting crowded. Thousands of active satellites, dead satellites, spent rocket stages and tiny fragments now share the same orbits. Even a speck of paint moving at about 10 km per second can disable a satellite worth several hundred crore rupees and disturb phone, internet, weather and navigation services that depend on it.
India now has more than 50 operational satellites, besides launch vehicles in flight and future human spaceflight plans. Every launch and every year in orbit adds collision risk. ISRO’s answer has two parts. One part is better eyes on the sky through Project NETRA. The other part is cleaner behaviour in space so India adds no fresh junk.
The scale of the problem was placed in Parliament in March 2026. As of March 2026, 129 trackable debris objects from Indian missions were in orbit. ISRO publishes this assessment every year in the Indian Space Situational Assessment Report (ISSAR).
| Category of Indian Debris | Number |
|---|---|
| Defunct satellites in low earth orbit | 23 |
| Defunct satellites in geostationary orbit | 26 |
| PSLV rocket bodies still in orbit | 40 |
| GSLV rocket bodies still in orbit | 4 |
| LVM3 rocket bodies still in orbit | 3 |
| Fragments from PSLV-C3 rocket body break up | 33 |
| Total trackable Indian objects | 129 |
To stop the count from rising, India announced the Debris Free Space Mission (DFSM) in April 2024 during the 42nd meeting of the Inter Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) in Bengaluru. The mission aims for zero debris creation by all Indian actors, government and private, by 2030. Mission designs now keep extra fuel margins so satellites and upper stages can be guided to a safe re entry or moved to a low orbit with less than five years of life left. The target is more than 99 percent success in post mission disposal, with no intentional break ups that leave long lived debris and special care for the 400 km band used for human spaceflight.
Day to day protection is handled by the ISRO System for Safe and Sustainable Space Operations Management (IS4OM), set up in 2022. The IS4OM centre coordinates collision avoidance moves, re entry predictions and compliance with global guidelines of the IADC and the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNCOPUOS). It also guides Indian start ups through IN-SPACe on debris mitigation. The Chandrapur radar will feed more Indian data into this system, so India can warn its own operators faster instead of waiting only on foreign catalogues.
ISTRAC Network and ISRO Centres Across India
Where Is ISTRAC Located?
ISTRAC is headquartered at Peenya Industrial Area in Bengaluru, Karnataka, with its Mission Operations Complex and Space Situational Awareness Control Centre on the same campus. The network operates ground stations across India and abroad to give continuous coverage from lift off to orbit insertion and through the full mission life.
The Indian stations include Bengaluru, Lucknow, Sriharikota, Thiruvananthapuram and Port Blair, along with deep space antennas at Byalalu near Bengaluru. Overseas support comes from Mauritius, Brunei, Biak in Indonesia, Svalbard in Norway, Troll in Antarctica, Vietnam and Panama, besides cooperation with other agencies. These links carry voice, data and tracking signals between stations and the control centre in real time.
How Many ISRO Centres Are There in India?
ISRO operates more than 20 major centres and units spread across about 15 cities, each with a defined role in rockets, satellites, applications and tracking. The headquarters of ISRO and the Department of Space is at Antariksh Bhavan in Bengaluru, and the national space agency works under the Department of Space.
| Major ISRO Centre | Location | Core Role |
|---|---|---|
| Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) | Thiruvananthapuram | Launch vehicle design |
| Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC) | Valiamala and Bengaluru | Liquid and cryogenic engines |
| ISRO Propulsion Complex (IPRC) | Mahendragiri | Engine assembly and testing |
| Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC SHAR) | Sriharikota | Launch port |
| U R Rao Satellite Centre (URSC) | Bengaluru | Satellite building |
| Space Applications Centre (SAC) | Ahmedabad | Payloads and applications |
| National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) | Hyderabad | Earth observation data |
| ISTRAC | Bengaluru | Tracking and mission operations |
| Master Control Facility (MCF) | Hassan and Bhopal | Control of geostationary satellites |
| Human Space Flight Centre (HSFC) | Bengaluru | Gaganyaan and human missions |
| North Eastern Space Applications Centre (NE-SAC) | Shillong | Space applications for Northeast |
The Chandrapur facility adds a new eastern node to this map. It will be the first ISTRAC radar research centre in the Northeast, complementing the NE-SAC at Shillong which already uses space data for resource mapping and disaster support in the region.
Radar Technology in Focus: From Tracking Radars to NISAR
Radar is central to both stories in this article, but the two radars do different jobs. A space tracking radar at Chandrapur sends radio waves upward to find the position and speed of satellites and debris. An imaging radar like NISAR looks downward at Earth to map land, ice, crops and disasters. Both use radio waves that pass through clouds and work day and night, which optical cameras cannot do.
The Chandrapur plan shows this step by step growth. The first cloud radar will study clouds and improve weather and atmospheric models. The later phased array space object tracking radar will use many small antenna elements working together to steer beams fast without moving the dish. This design can watch several objects at once, which is vital when thousands of objects cross the sky every hour. ISTRAC already builds weather radars in multiple frequency bands, so the Assam centre builds on proven in house skill.
NASA ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar Mission
NISAR stands for the NASA ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar mission. It is the first joint Earth observation satellite of ISRO and the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), launched on 30 July 2025 by GSLV-F16 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota.
The 2,392 kg satellite flies in a sun synchronous orbit at about 743 km with an inclination of 98.4 degrees. It is the first satellite to carry dual frequency imaging radar on one platform, with an L band radar from NASA and an S band radar from ISRO sharing a 12 metre unfurlable mesh antenna held on a 9 metre boom. The satellite scans a 242 km wide strip with high detail and covers nearly all land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days. Data is free and open for study of ground movement, ice sheets, soil moisture, crops, forests, sea ice, shoreline change and disaster response. The mission entered its science phase in late 2025 for a planned multi year operation.
For readers, the link is simple. NISAR shows India’s strength in radar imaging from space. Chandrapur shows India’s push for radar watching of space itself. One maps the ground, the other guards the orbits above it.
Key Takeaways
- The foundation stone for the ISTRAC Advanced Radar Research Facility was laid at Chandrapur in Kamrup Metropolitan district on 21 September 2026.
- The Chandrapur facility is being built under Project NETRA, the Network for Space Object Tracking and Analysis started in September 2019.
- The first cloud-research radar at Chandrapur will be commissioned by February 2027, with two more tracking radars to follow in about 18 months.
- ISTRAC stands for the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network, established on 6 September 1976 and headquartered at Peenya in Bengaluru.
- India had 129 trackable debris objects from its own missions in orbit as of March 2026, and targets zero debris creation by 2030 under the Debris Free Space Mission.
- The NISAR satellite, the NASA ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar mission weighing 2,392 kg, was launched on 30 July 2025 by GSLV-F16 from Sriharikota.
