About BRICS Astronomy

About BRICS Astronomy Consortium (BAC)  

BRICS is an association of five major emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. The BRICS members are known for their significant influence on regional affairs. The BRICS mechanism aims to promote peace, security, development, and cooperation. It also aims at contributing significantly to the development of humanity and establishing a more equitable and fair world.

The goal of BRICS Astronomy Consortium (BAC) is to exploit these basic strengths and common goals for the mutual betterment of our general populaces. Astronomy was established as one of five thematic science areas within BRICS at a ministerial meeting held in South Africa in 2014. The BRICS Astronomy Working Group (BAWG) was then established the following year.


About BRICS Astronomy Working Group (BAWG)

BAWG is responsible for promoting cooperation activities in astronomy priority areas. At the 2017 annual BAWG meeting it was resolved to establish a BRICS “flagship” programme and a subsequent call for concept proposals was initiated.

The BRICS Astronomy Consortium has laid a good foundation and made progress over the years, evident in that finally in 2021 the consortium was successfully granted seed funding to work on the flagship project, The BRICS Intelligent Telescope and Data Network (BITDN) Project. The flagship programme is based on a merger of the transients and big data proposals which were presented, discussed and rated at the October 2019 BAWG meeting. The combined programme is currently ongoing and involves astrophysical transients, survey science and time domain astronomy. It has plans to involve forefront observational facilities and the big data/compute infrastructure needed to support them. Existing and new facilities in all 5 BRICS countries will be harnessed and developed to support the programme. The
programme strongly supports the human capacity development agenda within BRICS and will foster scientific collaboration in the frontiers of astronomy between scientists in all the BRICS countries and beyond.
 

For more information about BRICS astronomy visit: https://www.bricsastronomy.org/