The ‘Spectrographic Investigation of Nebular Gas (SING)’ is a UN-led initiative that invites research teams from all over the world to compete for an opportunity to design payloads that will be shuttled to Tiangong aboard rockets of the Chinese Manned Space Agency.
- Scientists at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru, were among nine groups selected from 42 applicants in 2019 as part of the project.
- However, tensions between India and China since May 2020 is worrying Indian astrophysicists involved in this ambitious project to install an Indian-made spectroscope aboard the developing Chinese space station Tiangong.
- The project also involves collaboration with the Institute of Astronomy, Russian Academy of Sciences, and has been designed and developed by research students at the IIA.
- The SING project will be the first space collaboration involving India and China, and primarily deals with sending and positioning a spectrograph, an instrument that splits light into constituent frequencies and wavelengths, to study ultraviolet radiation.
- This will help analyse the make-up and sources of interstellar gas in the region that swept by the space station as it orbits around the earth.
