Author: Pradeep

  • My second journalistic publication

    I first wrote for a journalism publication in 2009 for CNN-IBN. I had written then about ISRO’s 40th anniversary with the help of Jaimon Joseph.

    My second article appeared a couple of days ago in a new publication called The Wire about the commercial trends that seem to be beginning to emerge in the Indian space programme. The feedback from many of my family members was that they could not understand what I was talking about. This makes my article an almost failure in my consideration, other than the fact that I managed to get it published with help from Vasudevan Mukunth.

  • Multi Application Solar Telescope commissioned in Udaipur

    2015 is being celebrated by the United Nations as the International Year of Light. ISRO shared on Facebook today news of the operationalization of the Multi Application Solar Telescope (MAST) on location at the Udaipur Solar Observatory.

    I had a look at the article about the Udaipur Solar Observatory on Wikipedia and was immediately depressed to see not too many references and a tag that said that the article doesn’t have enough reliable references. I added two references and then was immediately too tired to write a blog post here about the unveiling of the telescope and its implication (some laziness was involved as well). Hence, I requested my friend and journalist Vasudevan Mukunth :

    In a day, he produced quite a brilliant write up about the Multi Application Solar Telescope for his publication, The Wire. The article – A Telescope that gives India a new place in the Sun is quite beautiful and succinctly written and is a must read. In fact, he wrote such a brilliant piece that my work is only to link to his story.

  • Nobody would spend on science if it did not spin-off technology

    Very few organisations in the world fund the fundamental sciences – astronomy, high energy physics or even certain strands of biology whose only intention is to know what the universe is about. In many science talks that I attend many scientists also try to focus on how this idea will help the common man rather than focus on how science would advance the knowledge of mankind, in particular. Schools are only now beginning to teach any amount on quantum physics which surpassed several boundaries in the 1970s. Science taught in the schools today are at least fifty to seventy years old. This creates a difference in the perception of science among the scientific community and that seen by common man.

    I’ve been spending the whole of last week watching videos related to Jaggi Vasudev of the Isha Foundation. One of his conversations is with American neuroscientist Dr. David Eagleman inserted below.

    In the video at about the 17 minute mark, he brings up the topic of how the science we do today is so influenced by funding which looks at how it is beneficial to man. Vasudev says that science would really be more effective if it is delinked from that objective and one does it purely with the curiosity to understand the world we live in. He suggests that technology should be given the responsibility of figuring out how the knowledge yearned from science be put to use in benefit of humankind. Currently, both are intertwined so tightly that science is funded on the basis of its application, technology spin-offs rather than the fact that it would further the boundaries of knowledge, per se.

    This is an interesting distinction that I had not been aware of despite my grounding in science and some time I spent working with technology as an engineer. I shared this because I think it is an interesting insight to work with.

  • ISRO to launch 5 British satellites as its first commercial launch in 2015

    ISRO will launch 5 British Satellites on behalf of Antrix Corporation (which is ISRO’s commercial arm) on board the PSLV-C28 vehicle on July 10, 2015. This is the PSLV’s 30th mission. ISRO will use the PSLV’s Extended Length (XL) variant to launch 1440 kg payload consisting of 5 British satellites into orbit.

    The 5 satellites are the Surrey Satellite Technology Limited’s (SSTL) DMC3 satellites and CNBT-1 satellites and the Surrey Space Center’s DeOrbitSail spacecraft.

    DMC3 satellites

    The DMC stands for the Disaster Management Constellation of 3 satellites built by the SSTL for it’s wholly owned subsidiary, DMCii (DMC International Imaging Ltd) which is executing this project for a Chinese company, 21AT.

    A visualisation of the orbit and position of each satellite in the DMC constellation. Image Courtesy: SSTL
    A visualisation of the orbit and position of each satellite in the DMC constellation. Image Courtesy: SSTL

    The DMC constellation is a group of 3 small satellites placed in orbit 120 degrees apart, as shown in the image above. The idea is to quickly image areas which have been struck by disaster with high-resolution cameras (1 m resolution) with a capability to provide very fast down link in order to help make the images available quickly in order to assess damage and plan disaster response.

    CBNT-1

    I could not read much about this satellite but it seems that the company that built it, SSTL will share more details after the launch. All that is known for sure right now is that it weighs 91 kg and is a technology demonstrator mission.

    DeOrbitsail

    This is an interesting 7 kg 3U cubesat with dimensions of 10 x 10 x 34 cm. It contains a highly densely packed 4 x 4 meter sail which will be deployed in space in order to increase drag in order to cause the spacecraft to deorbit and return back to Earth. The project is developed by the Surrey Space Center (not the same as SSTL).

    PSLV-C28

    The Spacecraft mounted on the Launch adapter called the L-adapter. Image Courtesy: ISRO
    The Spacecraft mounted on the Launch adapter called the L-adapter. Image Courtesy: ISRO

    For ISRO, the challenge begins with the three DMC3 spacecrafts. It had to fit in these 3 satellites each of which has a length of 3 meters into the 3.2 m diameter, 8.9 m long payload fairing of the PSLV-XL. They resolved the issue by changing the launch adapter. A launch adapter is basically a platform on which the satellites are kept and launched from once the last stage of the PSLV reaches the designated orbit and orientation. The vehicle uses a new launch adapter which has a triangular deck and is called the Multiple Satellite Adapter – Version 2 (MSA-V2).

    Illustration of the Multiple Satellite Adapter - Version 2 (MSA-V2) with the satellite mounted and showing the launch of various satellites. Image Courtesy: NasaSpaceflight.com
    Illustration of the Multiple Satellite Adapter – Version 2 (MSA-V2) with the satellite mounted and showing the launch of various satellites. Image Courtesy: NasaSpaceflight.com

    A success now will help cement the PSLV’s record and hopefully bring more business Antrix’s way. This launch shows that even commercial launches can make requirements on a proven launch vehicle that if managed would improve the agility of the variety of satellites that the PSLV is capable of putting into orbit. This agility lowers cost and enables Antrix to reach a wider market to sell launches on the PSLV. Wishing ISRO Godspeed.

  • Hello world!

    The United States is celebrating its independence day today. I am embarking on yet another blog. My first blog had my name on it and was on Blogspot. It was a Tibetan blog talking about alternative services to those provided by Google that first turned my attention to WordPress. I have since used Drupal, Tumblr, Vox, LiveJournal and the self-hosted WordPress. At the end I am back here again.

    It has been a journey where I have learnt a lot. In the meanwhile, I moved away from being a mechanical engineering undergrad to being a banker. No MBAs were involved. In the end, I use my most favourite of the names of blogs I have used thus far.

    Parallel Spirals is my imagination of how I see myself following these various parallel interests that I spiral down into once in a while.

  • And the rains come marching in

    image

  • 6 Month Anniversary

    Yesterday, we crossed the 6 month anniversary to our marriage.

  • Between Political Democracy and Protests

    Ethan Zuckerman spoke at re:publica2015 at Berlin on May 1, 2015, where among various things he mentioned how we’re treading the middle ground between political democracy and protest movements after various rounds of success and failures under each.

    If you’re too lazy to watch the whole video or on low bandwidth or just love to read, you can read his own writing about the talk here.

  • Our Tulsi plant

    Our neighbours had lent out the flat for rent. The aunty staying there (Raji aunty) had given us her Tulsi plant when she moved to Chennai. Because of our constant care and attention, two out of the three shoots withered. We then went to Babu Anand Farms to ask what would have caused the shoots to wither. He said, it may be because of the lack of nitrogen in the ceramic pot in which we had kept the shoots. He suggested that we replace the soil along with some natural fertilizers like coco soil and manure.

    Tulsi

    Dhanya putting in the new soil along with the natural fertilizers
    Dhanya putting in the new soil along with the natural fertilizers

    We’re still trying to recover the last shoot although we have added a Rama Tulsi that we obtained from the farm along with the last shoot. Awaiting results.

  • RC Planes and the Cansat competition

    In 2009, whilst I was involved with SEDS-India, we had initiated a cansat competition at our chapter in Vellore Institute of Technology. The next year on a team at IIIT-Hyderabad won the international cansat competition, a feat they repeated the next year. I have been thinking up ideas of how to make a reasonable cansat competition in India, given the restriction on launch of amateur rockets to expand the popularity of cansats beyond these pockets.

    Given this background, I wanted to attend this introductiory talk to a workshop on aeromodelling and RC Planes given by a member of the Aeromodelling club at VJTI, Mitali Shah.The workshop is slated to run through weekends on Sunday at Maker’s Asylum in One Indiabulls Center from April 4.

    At the time that I was doing engineering, there were several co-working and hackerspaces being developed in Mumbai. The advent of MAKE magazine in the US in 2005 brought on what was being touted as the maker movement. This saw the advent of makerspaces along the same lines as the hackerspaces. Maker’s Asylum is one such makerspace that has been evolving as part of this global maker movement. This is a welcome experiment among a group of models being tried out by people in India to see what works and what does not.

    The talk today consisted of introducing the workshop which begins on April 4. The workshop is to include a day of theory lessons and then nearly 2 days of practical build sessions and flight at Mahalaxmi Race Course (one of the few sites in Mumbai which has permission to fly RC planes). I also heard talk of developing a wind tunnel and how accessibility would be much easier compared to getting hold of wind tunnels in colleges like VJTI and IIT in Mumbai.

    During the talk it struck me that RC planes are good candidates to carry cansats for their drop.

    Let me take you back to what is involved in a cansat competition. An amateur rocket is used to carry and deliver the cansat at a predestined point and left to descent along a parabolic path. At the competition we held in VIT, we launched the cansat from atop a building complex. With amateur rockets being severely restricted and RC planes having a relatively easier access profile than amateur rockets, it would make a great carrier plane for cansats. It would be something akin to the way Virgin Galactic plans to launch its rockets.

    After her talk, I spoke to Mitali and she confirmed that RC planes would be able to carry cansats comfortably.

    A cansat competition in India could thus be done as a part of RC planes competition already being held in the country or independently in collaboration with aeromodelling clubs replacing the amateur rockets. RC planes would carry the payload to a designated height and release it. The cansat would then after a few seconds of free flight would then parachute down where they could meet the data requirements sought in the competition. After touchdown, teams would have to search for cansats by fox hunting, which are currently done by amateur radio enthusiasts in Mumbai.