Sron Netherlands Institute For Space Research (abbreviated as SRON) is a Dutch institute that performs scientific research in the field of space exploration. The institute is located in Utrecht, Netherlands and is part of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). SRON was founded in 1957, making it one of the oldest space research institutes in Europe.
SRON’s mission is to perform world-leading space science and engineering research in order to enable future space missions and contribute to solving grand challenges facing society. The institute’s main focus areas are astrophysics, solar physics, and planetary science. In addition to its own cutting-edge facilities, SRON also operates or participates in several international observatories and satellites.
The institute comprises six divisions: Science Operations & Data Systems; Astrophysics; Solar Physics; Planetary Science; Space Instrumentation; and Theory & Modelling. Each division consists of a number of groups that carry out specific research projects. SRON has a staff of approximately 250 people, including around 140 scientists from more than 20 different countries.
SRON plays an important role in both national and international space programmes. In the Netherlands, SRON is responsible for operating the country’s only satellite ground station, which receives data from Dutch satellites such as SMART-1, Proba-2,and TGO/Sentinel-5p. The institute also leads or participates in several European Space Agency (ESA) missions, most notably the International Gamma Ray Observatory (INTEGRAL), Herschel Space Observatory (HSO),and XMM-Newton X-ray observatory. INTEGRAL has been operational since 2002 and continues to provide groundbreaking data on high-energy astronomical phenomena such as black holes and gamma ray bursts. HSO was launched in 2009 and observed hundreds of never before seen star forming regions across our galaxy before its mission ended in 2013 . XMM-Newton is currently the largest X-ray telescope ever built and has made numerous discoveries since its launch in 1999 , such as finding evidence for intermediate mass black holes .