Category: Space

  • ISRO’s Single Person Multiple Post Situation

    The Parliamentary Estimates Committee asked ISRO Chairman Dr K Radhakrishnan whether it was legal for him to be holding 4 positions – Chairman, ISRO; Chairman, Space Comission; Secretary, Department of Space and Chairman, Antrix Corporation. It seems to be legal since every Chairman since Vikram Sarabhai has held these posts since the 1960s.

    The question raises an interesting point. This may be a special arrangement done for high technology departments in the 1960s like the nuclear Department of Atomic Energy to enable easy and quick decision making and also enable smoother functioning. It remains to be seen if this has been misused.

    This ‘concentration of power’ has never seemingly been questioned before. The mixture of the failure of GSLV and the Antrix-DEVAS deal seems to have brought this question to the fore.

    This multiplicity of posts may have been created to satisfy Government requirements. However, having one person in charge may cause problems related to transparency, accountability and decision making.

  • First Report on Space Tourism in India

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://parallelspirals.blogspot.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on April 5, 2011. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    Clark Lindsey posted on his RLV and Space Transport blog yesterday about this first report on space tourism in India. The report is brought out by the University of Petroleum and Energy Studies (UPES) and McGill University. I had a cursory glance through this report and given below are my thoughts about this report.

    The Report is done by a University (UPES) which you would not equate with space. It is done by the Center for Aviation Studies and released by a Secretary in the Civil Aviation Ministry. Again, not really showing involvement from anyone in the space business in India today. This makes it a tad difficult to understand their background with relation to this subject.

    The Report itself is in an interesting format. It puts out the condition in the US and compares the same with the Indian situation and draws unfortunate parallels. For example, it talks about building spaceports merely by extending airports. It even talks about DGCA playing a role similar to what the FAA does in the USA.

    The Report is perhaps a first that is publicly released and perhaps lays the foundation for in-depth topic specific reports on various aspects of space tourism. There have been interesting suggestions for space tourism vehicles based out of India – as an example Earth2Orbit’s Sushmita Mohanty suggested developing the Space ReEntry Experiment vehicle(SRE)  as a space tourism vehicle out of India. Such bold suggestions were not studied or considered during the course of this report. It also depended rather heavily on the US scenario and did not envisage anything from the Indian perspective which could have made it a more worthwhile report rather than trying to make it an Indian copy of a US model.

    India has many interesting alternatives. Entrepreneurial companies like Team Indus and Earth2Orbit are sprouting in India which could develop and improve SREs or even totally new ventures developing rockets and crafts that could handle the technology aspect. A Space Transportation Authority could be setup coming out of the current Launch Authorisation Board from within ISRO. There is already an Indian expecting to fly in SpaceShipTwo.

    All in all, I think that the report is an important first step which was not bold enough and forward thinking enough but which I hope pushes many more studies and public interest in the idea of space tourism.

  • Indian Perspectives on Human Spaceflight

    Dr. Harish, Deputy Project Director, Human Spaceflight Programme, ISRO spoke at Aero India 2011 held recently in Bangalore. The title of this article made me excited enough to want to watch it.

    However, after watching the video, it was quite general. His talk was very non-specific and did not have much matter. Some points though involved the choice of the Soyuz style architecture for the crew vehicle based on the Shuttle vs Soyuz experience and safety record of the US and Russia respectively. He talked about how humans would control the flight very mysteriously without expanding on it. He explained that the experience with the Space Capsule Re-entry Experiment (SRE) gave ISRO the confidence to go ahead with the human spaceflight programme. He put across that putting an air conditioning on the SRE would give us the crew vehicle – which is a rather crude way of putting it. He talked about how experience of Apollo management style has influenced India and last but not the least he explained that there is excessive stress on safety.

    I do not think that a keen follower of the programme would have missed anything if he did not listen to this talk. However, if you have the time or the inclination, feel free to go through the video. I would like to stress again that Indian scientists and engineers need to get much better at communicating to the common man what they’re doing.

  • Reason for the Long Solar Minimum

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://parallelspirals.blogspot.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on March 03, 2011 as per the permalink. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    A project funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Department of Science and Technology (DST) of the Government of India has claimed to have found the reason for the long solar minimum experienced during the last solar cycle. A team led by Indian Dibyendu Nandy of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Kolkata which included Andrés Muñoz-Jaramillo of Montana State University and Petrus C. H. Martens of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center of Astrophysics.

    The results will be presented in Nature magazine today. Nandy has made this webpage about the discovery which to me is incomprehensible. My friend Srinivas Laxman wrote this article in today’s Times of India which fares a bit better for comprehension sake. For me the best article on the discovery was by Dr. Tony Philips writing for NASA Science News.

    NASA held a media tele-conference on the topic and hence this was widely covered by the press in the US. There seems to be little to no press coverage of the topic in India besides the one written up by Srinivas Laxman.

  • Budgetary Allocation for the Department of Space in Budget 2011-12

    If you have the time, I request you to consider reading the document in full (Excel Sheet). If you do not, here is the document with planned budgetary allocation for 2010-11 against revised figures  in 2010-11 in crores of Rupees:

    • Development of the GSLV Mk-III:  125.64 (against 130.78)
    • Cryogenic Upper Stage Project: 0.1 (against 0.1)
    • Continuation of the PSLV: 244.50 (against 224)
    • for the Vikram Sarabhai Space Center: 463.03 (against 375.18)
    • for the ISRO Intertial Systems Unit: 39.74 (against 29.63)
    • for the Liquid Propulsion Systems Center: 231.33 (against 203.02)
    • for the GSLV (including the Mk-III): 292.46 (against 209.10)
    • Space Capsule Recovery Experiment: 4.40 (against 4.79)
    • Manned Mission Initiatives/Human Space Flight: 98.81 (against 14.71)
    • Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology: 100 (against 10)
    • Semi-Cryogenic Engine Development: 150 (against 40)
    • Oceansat-2 and -3: 50 (against 10)
    • Resourcesat-2 and -3: 32.66 (against 22)
    • ISRO Satellite Center: 233 (against 244.60)
    • Laboratory for Electro-Optical Systems: 42.85 (against 36.71)
    • RISAT-1: 0.95 (against 2)
    • GSAT-4/GSAT-4R/GSAT-11EM: 50 (against 0)
    • Navigation Satellite System:  218.30 (against 167.40)
    • Semi-Conductor Laboratory: 45.72 (against 26.42)
    • Advanced Communication Satellite (including GSAT-11): 410 (against 35)
    • Earth Observation – New Missions, (Cartostat-3, TES Hyperspectral, DMSAR-1,ENVISAT,SCATSAT,RISAT-3, Future EO Missions and GISAT): 200 (against 0)
    • SARAL: 22.5 (against 13)
    • Satish Dhawan Space Center: 337.25 (against 261.51)
    • ISTRAC: 45.75 (against 53.75)
    • Space Applications Center:  291.99 (against 183.80)
    • Development and Education Communication Unit: 73.56 (against 22.76)
    • National Natural Resources Management System: 72.84 (against 42.06)
    • Earth Observation Application Mission: 2.53 (against 2.33)
    • National Remote Sensing Center: 145.55 (against 154.49)
    • Disaster Management Support: 34.57 (against 29.97)
    • North Eastern Space Applications Center: 6.07 (against 0)
    • Physical Research Laboratory:  48.31 (Against 33.97)
    • National Atmospheric Research Laboratory: 16.44 (against 8.43)
    • National Institute of Climate Change and Environmental Studies: 0.1 (against 0.1)
    • RESPOND: 15 (against 14)
    • Sensor Payload Development/Planetary Sciences Programme: 30 (against 8.25)
    • Megha-Tropiques: 2 (against 10)
    • ADITYA: 40 (Against 5.75)
    • ASTROSAT-1 and -2: 10 (against 10)
    • Chandrayaan-1 and -2: 80 (against 25)

  • Talk by R Navalgund

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://parallelspirals.blogspot.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on March 01, 2011. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    I went to the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) on Monday to hear the National Science Day Public Lecture organised by TIFR and the TIFR Alumni Association. The talk was delivered by Ragunath Navalgund, Director, Space Applications Center, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

    At the welcoming address, the TIFR Director gave us a brief about how the day, February 28 had come to being celebrated as National Science Day. He said it was the day that C V Raman had submitted the manuscript which talked about the Raman Effect for the first time. The discovery of the Effect gave Raman a Nobel Prize and is still one of the most renowned discovery by an Indian scientist. He said further that Raman used to give public talks on science in a manner which was understandable to the general public. This is perhaps one of the first examples of science outreach by an Indian scientist. The day was later adopted by the Government of India to be called National Science Day. At TIFR, the day was celebrated by lectures from prominent alumni members.

    R Navalgund then gave the Director a copy of the lunar atlas with pictures from the Chandrayaan-I spacecraft. I was thinking of nicking it!

    Navalgund began his talk titled, “Remote Sensing of the Earth and the Moon” by talking about remote sensing in general. He defined it and explained how it was different from “seeing with our eyes”. He explained the difference as being sensing in various wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum other than just visible light like our eyes. The results are in the form of data sets which are then converted into images. He explained that remote sensing was done from various platforms – low-Earth orbit and geo-stationary orbits depending on their applications.

    He moved on to various types of sensing – active and passive and then explained the various techniques of remote sensing. He showed the push-broom type, the pixel-by-pixel type, the synthetic aperture radar and the hyperspectral imaging.

    He talked about how various parts of the electromagnetic spectrum could be studied in individual bands interacted with objects on the ground and how these could help in providing useful information. As an example, he talked about studying leaves with red light and near infra red light to understand if leaves were healthy or mature. This data helped in providing the Government a plausible estimate of the healthy plants in the country well before the harvesting period. Similar studies were done in various spectrum for hydrology, cryosphere, forest cover, atmosphere and oceans to provide similar information. Information involved ground water levels, forest covers, smogs, possible fishing zones, crop health prediction and yield.

    He then moved on to the remote sensing of the Moon. He showed the various types of craters and features like the central peaks of craters and impact melts. He also showed pictures from the recently discovered lava tube.

    The interesting points though came out in the question and answer session. Answering questions by students from Kendriya Vidyalaya, Navalgund came out with quite a few interesting points that were unknown. Speaking on India’s participation in the International Space Station (ISS), he said that there was an informal agreement on the possibility of India conducting experiments on the ISS. He said that the discussions were currently on in this regard. The experiments, he said, would relate to the study of green house gases. He said Indian institutions would have to provide a proposal for these experiments and some would also come from within ISRO. Answering another question on the Human Spaceflight Programme, he said that all the designs, approvals and paper work was done. The Programme had got an in-principle nod from the Indian cabinet. Discussions were currently on as to how to implement the programme. The two ideas included doing the testing in a single shot or testing the elements individually as done with Space Re-entry Experiment (SRE). He said the programme was in this phase currently. Answering a question I posed, he shocked me by saying that data from the Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) and Hyper Spectral Imager (HySI) have been made available online. Srinivas found the website for me, it is here. Navalgund explained that the images were released only after 1 year to aid the investigations done by principal investigators who were the primary users of the data. He said that NASA had separately released the data from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3). On Mars, Navalgund said that the plans were currently in drawing board phase and currently, India only had capability to do a flyby or orbiter programme indigenously.

    My friend, Srinivas asked the question about why India’s CHACE instrument was not given the credit for the lunar water discovery as much as M3 or even Mini-SAR. Navalgund replied that the instrument did have a short operation span and did find spectrum peaks for water, carbon dioxide and other elements. He said a lot of time was spent on calibrating the data properly. This was a long drawn process which possibly led to the CHACE losing out on the credit for the water discovery.

    I also met a member of the newly joined Google Lunar X Prize team, Team Indus at the lecture.

  • Using Chandrayaan-I to find human habitability sites on the Moon

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as http://parallelspirals.blogspot.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on February 24, 2011 as per the time stamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    The current edition of Current Science magazine has the paper by Arya et. all titled, “Detection of potential site for future human habitability on the Moon using Chandrayaan-1 data“. The result itself was reported way back in March, 2010. The paper provides more details and some interesting facets. The paper is based on work done by the Terrain Mapping Camera on board the Chandrayaan-I spacecraft.

    The high spatial resolution of the Terrain Mapping Camera and the close 100 km orbit helped scientists build Digital Elevation Models (DEM) to help study the lunar terrain in great detail. This was used to study potential human habitability sites on the Moon. Based on previous studies, they concentrated their efforts on riles and lava tubes on the lunar surface. Study on the Oceanus Procellurum region on the Moon showed that lava tubes were good places for possible human habitability. They found that there was no effect of cosmic rays deeper than 6 meters, no effect of solar particles deeper than 1 meter, no radiation effects and no significant temperature difference was observed with the temperature remaining nearly constant at -20 degrees Celsius. It is also opined that the presence of partial lava tube structure reduces requirement of construction. Scientists also think that the cool temperatures here could make these a candidate for water and ice traps on the lunar surface. Lava tubes also provide a dust free environment.

    Lava Tubes are interesting to study for reasons other than human habitability as well. To geologists, it provides a section of the lunar bedrock and top soil that would be difficult to access otherwise. It could also help geologists to study native lunar material which has not been affected by external factors like meteoric impacts, solar particles etc. It could also provide an understanding of the thermal profiles and volcanism on the Moon.

    The paper now profiles the area of the Moon under study, Oceanus Procellurum using a picture of the Moon taken by the CARTOSAT-2A spacecraft from Earth orbit!

    Using various techniques (explained in the paper) they find that the rough cylindrical tube which comprises the lava tube is 120 meters in diameter and 1.72 km in length. The thickness of the roof is 170 meters hence safe from various considerations discussed above (radiation, cosmic rays etc.). The Hyper Spectral Imager (HySI) was used to do chemical and mineralogical study. It was found that the surface was homogeneously basaltic rich in Iron and Titanium. The homogeneity of  the results was also used to predict that there was no lava flow after the lava tube was formed. To confirm the result, surface ages of the north and south section of the uncollapsed rille was done using the crater counting technique. Using this method ages of the northern section was found to be 3.47 Ga and the southern section was found to be 3.43 Ga. This more or less rules out “differential emplacements of the mare basalts”.

    The authors of the paper state that using similar procedures, TMC and HySI data can be used to study different areas on the surface of the Moon.

  • Three Chandrayaan-I related papers out

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as http://parallelspirals.blogspot.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on February 23, 2011 as per the time stamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    Three papers directly related to instruments on-board the Chandrayaan-I spacecraft are out in 2011. Here’s a brief pointer to each.

    1. Goldschmidt crater and the Moon’s north polar region: Results from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3); Cheek, Pieters et. all

    2. Strong influence of lunar crustal fields on the solar wind flow [full paper – PDF]; Charles Lue et. all

    3. Lithological mapping of central part of Mare Moscoviense using Chandrayaan-I Hyperspectral Imager (HySI) data; S Bhattacharya et. all

    For the first paper, Cheek et. all, have trained their eyes on the Goldschmidt crater. The comparison of spectroscopic details from Goldschmidt to the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3)’s data of the Northern pole and from three different regions provide three different soil types – feldspathic soils with a low-Ca pyroxene component, feldspathic soils and basaltic soils. The content of Goldschmidt is feldspathic and was found to be locally different from the surrounding highlands. They state that the water spectrum is closely associated with the mineralogy of where the spectrum is located. Goldschmidt is said to have higher concentration of water spectrum compared to the local highlands but is similar to the feldspathic soil in the lunar far side.

    The second paper by Charles Lue et all is available in full. The SARA payload on Chandrayaan-I had detected the presence of mini-magnetospheres on the surface of the Moon. The paper Lue et. all believes that these magnetospheres affect the upstream solar winds. This affect the rate of solar wind proton hitting the surface of the Moon and also perhaps space weathering in places near the magnetic anomalies. The team uses data from the Solar Wind Monitor (SWIM) on Chandrayaan-I for these studies. Concluding, they say:

    Magnetized electrons are deflected by the magnetic field gradient and set up a charge separation (because  protons are non‐magnetized), resulting in an ambipolar  electric field. The related potential repels a fraction of the  protons. Therefore, the deflection can take place not only  over the strongest magnetic anomalies where the protons can  be magnetized, but (although at a lower efficiency) also at  weak, isolated anomalies of ❤ nT at 30 km altitude, with a  width of <100 km. Similar charge separation scenarios have  been discussed in early studies based on Apollo 12 surface  observations [e.g., Neugebauer et al., 1972], and in a recent  review paper by Halekas et al. [2010].

    This paper too has some influence on the lunar water formation technique suggested of solar wind implanting protons which are used by the OH ions to form water:

    Regardless of the deflection mechanism for protons,  the high solar wind deflection and reflection rates, as ions  and neutral atoms, imply a lower proton implantation rate in  the regolith at magnetic anomalies that may alter the space  weathering compared to the surrounding areas. Moreover, it  might affect the production of OH/H2O in the outermost  layer of the regolith via transfer of solar wind‐implanted  protons to the mineral‐bound oxygen [Pieters et al., 2009].

    The paper is available here in full.

    The third paper, Bhattacharya et all investigated the central region of the Mare Moscoviense region of the Moon. The paper has identified 5 geological units:

    five major compositional units have been identified: highland basin soils, ancient mature mare, highland contaminated mare, buried unit with abundant low-Ca pyroxene (LCP), and youngest mare unit

    The paper seems to be aimed as basis of using the Hyper Spectral Imager (HySI) data to delineate major compositional structures on the surface of the Moon and has done so successfully enabling it to be used for the rest of the data sets obtained.

  • Madhavan Nair’s comments in the Media

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as http://parallelspirals.blogspot.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on February 22, 2011 as per the time stamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    Madhavan Nair has recently been on a commenting and interviewing spree. The bulk of his effort seems to be deflect blame from ISRO on two recent events – the failure of the GSLV and the ISRO/DEVAS deal. His comments on the failure of the GSLV seem a little out of line. His comments on the ISRO/DEVAS deal could be considered as an effort to deflect blame from himself. Whatever the case, his media interactions since the GSLV failure has been interesting to follow.

    I have never seen a chair of any failure analysis committee commenting on the progress of the committee as the analysis was on-going. Madhavan Nair seems to be repeating the same statement since the first meeting held in January. He’d begun pointing to the Russian cryogenic engine for the failure of the GSLV in December. This changed from the “German connectors” blamed initially for the failure. The interesting point about this repeated statement is that while Russia is willing to “studying the data provided to them”, Madhavan Nair seems to be stressing on this point. Also, ISRO seems to be conducting experiments and we’re running dangerously close to the last date for the submission of the report of the GSLV Failure Analysis Committee under the chairmanship of Madhavan Nair. I would think a meeting would be needed to get the results, analyse them and create a cohesive report. Madhavan Nair’s various comments [see here and here] to the media vis-a-vis the GSLV seems to be beyond the control of ISRO.

    His other interesting comment comes on ISRO/DEVAS issue. I have refrained from commenting on the issue here since my understanding of the same has been very poor. Madhavan Nair did an interview with the Times of India on the issue. His version of the story matches more closely with the version put out by DEVAS than by ISRO. This has now pushed the Opposition to demand that the Prime Minister (who’s in-charge of the Department of Space) to make a statement in Parliament on the issue. Madhavan Nair’s comments carry weight because he was the man in-charge in ISRO when the deal was operationalised. It seems like Nair is trying to protect himself. It even seems to have worked partially since the Opposition has turned its attention again from him.

    While on the topic of ISRO/DEVAS, I’d also like to point out the different approaches that ISRO and DEVAS have taken to put out their statements. ISRO has put out a 5 page PDF (now removed!!) that is a bit confusing and leaves a few questions un-answered and DEVAS has posted a video in a FAQ format that lasts about 4 minutes.

  • Public Lecture by Sir Arnold Wolfendale

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as http://parallelspirals.blogspot.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on February 21, 2011 as per the time stamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    Sir Arnold Wolfendale gave a public lecture at the Marathi Vignan Parishad offices located in Chunabhatti. I saw this place for the first time when I was in a bus and was stuck in the famous Priyadarshini traffic jam. I was interested in going to this place but like everything else never got around to going there. My friend, Suhas Naik-Sattam who works at the Nehru Planetarium informed me about the event through Facebook. The talk was easy to understand and punctuated by humour and his experience over the years.

    The talk was a collaboration between National Centre for Science Communicators, Marathi Vignan Parishad, Khagol Mandal and International Union of Science Communicators. The talk was titled, “Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence”. Before beginning, he took a straw pole of the number of people who believed that we were alone in the Universe (or unique) and the number of people who thought we were not. Only 11 people in the whole room said that we were a unique species in the Universe. Rest of the audience, probably numbering about a 100 with school children involved said that we were not alone. Wolfendale said that over the years, when the same question was asked of the audience only 27% of the audience said that we were a common species.

    Wolfendale then shared a story. He said a scientist retired and got himself a place at one of the places in England which end up with a sheer cliff and jagged rocks at the bottom of the cliff and the sea beneath. Once, exploring the stars, the man tripped over and by chance got hold of a branch on the drop. He called for help when a heavenly voice asked him to let go and that He would catch him. “Anybody else, out there?” asked the scientist. Wolfendale said he was looking for that anybody else too – not God.

    He showed a picture of Jodrell Bank’s Lovell Telescope to demonstrate what a radio telescope looked like and then showed the Arecibo and explained how it was used to search for the above mentioned intelligence – life like us – was done from Arecibo. He spoke about expressions of people over the centuries from 13th century Chinese philosopher Teng Mu through Giordano Bruno and Copernicus and Galileo right upto the Kepler looking for planets in the Universe and wondering about the possibility of life on them.

    He then showed the famous Drake Equation, a formula thought to predict the number of detectable civilizations in the Universe. He explained the various terms in the equation, spoke about the possibility of finding their values so that one could substitute them in the Equation to find a plausible result. In explaining these terms, he spoke of SETI and the search started in 1960 by Francis Drake to find the value for “the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space”. He spoke of the Mars meteorite activity and how it influenced the debate on “the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space”.

    Wolfendale postulated possible time frames for which human like life form could evolve and exist. He guessed the number as 1 billion years. He spoke of solar flares that could damage the atmosphere occuring about once in a million years, an asteroid event like the dinosaurs once every 109 years and the life term of the Sun itself being about 4 billion years.

    As he explained this, he gave the evolutionary timeframe and also explained about the rarity of an asteroid impact at Yucatan.

    In the end, he said, if an alien civilization existed and one became extinct every billion years, we should be faced with a barrage of alien colonisations which was not happening and hence he sided with the 11 who said that we were a unique alien life form.

    To me, the ending was an odd bit of reasoning and the talk ended quite suddenly. I did enjoy the initial part of the lecture, though.