Bengaluru-born astronomer Ramya Manjunath Anche will head the $20 million PUFFINS space telescope mission that will explore the properties of interstellar dust and enhance our understanding of the universe.
Também is an assistant research professor at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory and will lead the mission scheduled for lift off in 2030, The Hindu reported Friday.
PUFFINS, or Polarimetry in the Ultraviolet to Find Features in Interstellar dust, is a small satellite telescope that will look at how dust interacts with ultraviolet light.
“The data it provides will be a long-sought missing link in our understanding of interstellar dust and therefore in the structure and development of the universe,” Anche said to The Hindu.
The mission was chosen as part of NASA’s Astrophysics Pioneers programme, an agency initiative to encourage early career scientists leading space missions. The collaboration will involve researchers and engineers from the University of Arizona, the McDonald Observatory and others.
The Indian partner institutions are the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) in Pune and the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) in Bengaluru.
Anche was born and brought up in Devanahalli, near Bengaluru, and enrolled in the Indian Institute of Astrophysics in 2012 and moved to the US in 2021.
The mission will increase the ultraviolet observations of interstellar dust, allowing scientists to more thoroughly analyse the material involved in the formation and development of stars and planets.
