AstroSat: a decade of frontline astronomy

Abstract

India’s first dedicated multi-wavelength space observatory, AstroSat, completed a decade in orbit on 28 September 2025. Over the past ten years, it has demonstrated the country’s capability to design, build, and operate an advanced space astronomy observatory. Observations carried out by the astronomy community in India and abroad have established AstroSat as a powerful platform for frontier research, enabling discoveries comparable to those made with the world’s leading space observatories. AstroSat has observed a diverse range of celestial objects, including ordinary stars, novae, supernovae, binary systems containing white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes, as well as distant galaxies seen as they existed billions of years ago. These observations have resulted in numerous discoveries and significantly advanced our understanding of some of the hottest, most energetic, and most enigmatic objects in the universe. The present article highlights the major scientific achievements of AstroSat during its first decade of operations and its enduring contributions to modern astronomy.