Characterization of near-Earth Space Environment
forms an important component of the international Space Weather program and has raised several
key scientific issues before the space science community. University of Calcutta has played a pivotal role in leveraging research activities in the domain of Space Science for the past nearly 100 years initiated with pioneering work by Late Professor Sisir Kumar Mitra in the 1930s. The
first manual ionospheric sounding system in Asia was assembled by Professor Mitra and installed at the
Ionosphere Field Station, Haringhata of the University in 1954.

University of Calcutta is implementing one of the first Stratosphere Troposphere(ST) Radar in the entire eastern and north-eastern parts of the country at 53MHz and plans to use it to carry out scientific studies on tropopause convection, gravity waves, equatorial/planetary
waves and ionospheric E and F region irregularities. The location of Kolkata is unique for these studies as it is at the verge of the tropics and at about the dip latitude of the northern crest of the equatorial ionization anomal
y. The proposed radar will have the capability to probe the lower atmosphere from about 3-22km and also ionospheric E and F region iregularities. The data products from the radar will be three component wind, Doppler spectral width and signal strength in the lower atmosphere and irregularity drift velocity and backscatter signal strength of ionospheric irregularities. Each antenna element in the radar
antenna array (~ 100m×100m) will be fed by a separate low power transmitter so that the
radar will have flexible antenna beam steering capability. It should be noted that there are no
such radars located in this transition region from the tropics to the sub-tropics in the south-east Asian longitude sector.

The Space Weather and Satellite Beacon group at the Institute of Radio Physics and Electronics
, University of Calcutta routinely operates a suite of instruments including Coherent Radio Beacon Experiment (CRABEX) receiver, GNU spaced-aerial receiver at VHF under collaboration with US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) of
the global SCINtillation Network Decision Aid (SCINDA) program of US Air Force, dual-frequency
GPS, multi-frequency multi-constellation GNSS,
Connected Autonomous Space Environment Sensor (CASES) Global Positioning System (GPS) software
-defined receiver, Event Driven Data Acquisition System (EDAS) under collaboration with the
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Colorado State University, Indian Regional Navigation
Satellite System (IRNSS) triple-band Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC) receiver and Proton Precession Magnetometer (PPM) for studying impact of space plasma on satellite-based communication and navigation systemsthereby forming a Comprehensive Space Science Data Hub (CSSDH).

The present talk will highlight some of the proposed scientific deliverables from the ST radar and explore possibilities of coordinated observations of the Calcutta and Nainital radar in conjunction with CSSDH.