NCRA also provides exciting opportunities and challenges in engineering fields such as analog and digital electronics, signal processing, antenna design, telecommunication and software development.

The Centre has its roots in the Radio Astronomy Group of TIFR, set up in the early 1960s under the leadership of Govind Swarup.

Research activities at NCRA-TIFR are centered on low frequency radio astronomy, with research in a wide range of areas, including solar physics, pulsars, active galactic nuclei, the interstellar medium, supernova remnants, the Galactic Center, nearby galaxies, high-redshift galaxies, Fundamental Constant Evolution, and the epoch of reionization.

[6][7] In April 2019, scientists of the NCRA led by Divya Oberoi published few of the deepest radio images of the sun.

GMRT consists of 30 fully steerable gigantic parabolic dishes of 45m diameter each spread over distances of up to 25 km.

This makes it possible to track celestial objects for about 10 hours continuously from their rising in east to their setting in the west by simply rotating the antenna mechanically along its long axis.