Space museum to come up at Tripura

Guwahati: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Indigenous Peoples' Front of Tripura (IPFT) government is planning to build a space museum at Sukanta Academy Complex in Agartala.

Tripura Minister for Science and Technology, Sudip Roy Barman said announced the project on Wednesday saying that the museum will be built for the children. The Minister informed that the museum will be built with technical expertise from Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).

The Minister also informed that a three-member ISRO delegation met the Tripura Health Minister on Tuesday and discussed the project. The ISRO delegation represents Associate Director Jeevan Pandit and Associate Director R. Raghu.

On discussion with the Health Minister about the space museum, ISRO has asked to submit a Detailed Project Report (DPR) within April this year and the project is expected to be functional before Durga Puja.

The Minister said, "We have come up with the project as it is very important for the students especially the children which will help them understand about space, stars and constellations, space travel, how astronauts function in space, how rockets are launched etc."

The space museum would be first of its kind in the state and a novel structure in the entire Northeast after it becomes operational. The museum would use an existing structure of simulated theme space travel entertainment centre called Journey to Sun via Mars which was inaugurated on December 24, 2008. The project was implemented by Tripura Renewable Energy Development Authority (TREDA) at Sukanta Academy in Tripura.

The Centre was operational till 2014 but after some technical faults started to appear it has become non-operational. The machine couldn't be repaired after several attempts after a meeting with the then Chief Minister Manik Sarkar where it was decided that it may be difficult to restart the Journey to Sun via Mars at Sukanta Academy due to technical reasons.

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