ISRO Breaks Ground on NETRA Radar Research Centre in Assam, Its First Space-Tracking Facility in the Northeast

The Indian Space Research Organisation is bringing its space-surveillance ambitions to the Northeast. On Monday, September 21, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma laid the foundation stone of ISRO's Advanced Radar Research Centre at Chandrapur, on the outskirts of Guwahati in Kamrup Metropolitan district, marking the start of construction on a facility that will help India keep watch over an increasingly crowded sky.

"Today, we will lay the foundation stone of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)'s Advanced Radar Research Centre at Chandrapur, Assam," Sarma announced, according to The Sentinel. In remarks reported by the Free Press Journal, the Chief Minister called it "a landmark moment for Assam" and said the facility "will strengthen India's ability to track objects in space." He also thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for selecting the state for the strategic project, adding: "For a state once considered far from India's major centres of technology, it is deeply satisfying."

What Project NETRA Is Trying to Solve

The Chandrapur centre is being built under Project NETRA, the Network for Space Object Tracking and Analysis, which ISRO first announced in 2019. NETRA is India's indigenous space situational awareness programme, designed to monitor orbital debris, defunct satellites and near-Earth objects that could threaten the country's spacecraft. According to The Sentinel, India operates more than 50 operational satellites, and for years the country largely depended on tracking data shared by the United States Space Command to know when its assets faced a collision risk. NETRA is meant to end that dependence by giving India its own eyes on orbit.

The programme rests on three pillars: radar systems, an optical telescope facility and a centralised control centre. Some of that architecture already exists. ISRO's System for Safe and Sustainable Space Operations Management, known as IS4OM, became operational in July 2022, The Sentinel reported. According to Voice&Data, the Chandrapur radar will work alongside an optical telescope being set up at Hanle in Ladakh and existing infrastructure such as the Multi-Object Tracking Radar at Sriharikota, together giving India a more continuous picture of activity across different orbital regimes.

From Thermal Power Station to Space Facility

The site itself carries a certain symbolism. The radar centre is coming up on land that once housed the Chandrapur Thermal Power Station, a defunct plant whose grounds the Assam government handed over to ISRO. The Sentinel reported that roughly 67 acres were identified for the facility, while Voice&Data put the allocation at about 200 bighas, or approximately 70 acres.

Getting to Monday's ceremony took years of groundwork. According to a detailed account in The Sentinel, ISRO first approached the Assam government about the land in early 2022, the transfer was completed in November 2023, and the final registration of the plot was signed on November 7, 2025. ISRO chairman Dr V. Narayanan visited the Chandrapur site in April 2025 as preparations advanced. Assam's Science and Technology Minister Keshab Mahanta has also been closely involved in shepherding the project, the paper reported.

Radars for Space Debris — and for the Weather

The facility, formally an ISTRAC Advanced Radar Research Facility under ISRO's Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network, will not be limited to watching satellites. According to Voice&Data, its remit covers satellite and space-debris monitoring, close-approach risk assessment and atmospheric re-entry prediction, along with weather research specific to Assam and the Northeast. The first radar to be installed at the site is expected to be a cloud-research radar, with installation targeted for February 2027, the publication reported.

That dual mandate matters for the region. The Northeast's complex monsoon dynamics and its vulnerability to intense rainfall events make dedicated atmospheric-research infrastructure valuable in its own right, quite apart from the space-tracking mission. Sarma said the centre aims to strengthen Assam's participation in India's space ecosystem and open research and innovation opportunities for young people in the region, according to Voice&Data.

Why Space Situational Awareness Is Urgent

The timing reflects a real shift in the orbital environment. With mega-constellations adding thousands of satellites to low Earth orbit and debris from decades of launches still circling the planet, every spacefaring nation faces growing collision risks. For India, whose satellite fleet underpins everything from banking and broadcasting to weather forecasting and border surveillance, an independent ability to track threats is increasingly seen as a matter of national security rather than scientific convenience.

NETRA's ground segment is designed to detect and catalogue objects, model their trajectories, and warn operators in time to manoeuvre satellites out of harm's way. The Chandrapur radar adds a northeastern vantage point to that network, complementing the high-altitude optical observations planned from Hanle and the launch-corridor radar coverage at Sriharikota.

A Milestone for the Northeast

For Assam, the project is as much about economic geography as it is about space science. The state has long argued that strategic and scientific institutions are concentrated in India's south and west, and Sarma framed Monday's ceremony as evidence that the map is being redrawn. The conversion of a shuttered power station into a national space facility offers Guwahati a tangible stake in India's expanding space programme — one that could seed a local ecosystem of researchers, engineers and students working on problems that were, until recently, handled thousands of kilometres away.

Sources: This article draws on reporting by The Sentinel (and its news report), the Free Press Journal and Voice&Data.