Tag: 2008

  • Impact of Space Debris, 50 Years after Space Age

    Building and launching satellites is all fun. But, after it has surpassed its usefulness it basically stays there in orbit. There are a few things that can be done to ensure that satellites are de-orbited after use.

    India’s own space debris policy was presented in a paper in the Current Science Magazine. India is a member of two organisations that deals with the problems of space debris – United Nations Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNCOPUOS) and the Inter-Agency Space Debris Co-ordination Committee (IADC). A recent paper by V Adimurthy, M Y S Prasad and S K Shivakumar titled “Space Mission Planning and Operations”, published in the Current Science magazine in Vol. 93 No. 12, had this to say on the topic:

    In the design of PSLV final stage, which uses earth-storable liquid propellants, a propellant venting system has been designed. ISRO’s launch vehicle, GSLV, also employs passivation of the cryogenic upper stage at the end of its useful mission. In the operational phase, the last stage of PSLV has been  passivated beginning with PSLV-C4, which was successfully launched in September 2002. With the implementation of this passivation, the possibility of on-orbit fragmentation has been minimized in all the future flights of PSLV. India’s launch vehicles, PSLV and GSLV, and the satellites IRS, INSAT and GSAT series are designed in such a way that no  operational debris is created in the launch and deployment phases of the mission.

    That seems to be pretty comprehensive. The paper further states that most of the Indian satellites are re-robited “on a case-by-case basis, consistent with national service requirements”. ISRO also has developed a space debris proximity analysis software that it uses regularily to keep a watch on currently active satellites, planning launch windows and launches with minimum debris and study the break-up fragmentation during launch.

    BBC World Service (radio) is broadcasting a series called One Planet. The topic for this week is Space Debris.

    Go to the above link for an audio preview. You can also generally listen to the show online but it’s not as fun as listening to it on radio is much more fun.

  • Celebrate World Space Week

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://pradx.wordpress.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on October 4, 2008 as per the permalink. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    Want to celebrate world space week?

    1. Learn about your country’s space agency.
    2. Talk about it to as many people as possible.
    3. Write, paint, click or record your experiences.

    For example, if you’re from INDIA, go to Wikipedia or search on the web to learn more about India’s space agency – ISRO. Talk to people about the SITE experiment, Edusat or Chandrayaan. Celebrate space!

  • The Chathurthi Celebrations This Year

    Mumbai and Maharashtra celebrate the Ganesh festival every year with great zest. This year the focus has been on eco-friendly celebrations –

    1. Symbolic immersions of house hold idols. Before the time they became community events nearly 75 years ago, the home made Gamesh idols were immersed in water in home ponds, kept there for some time before placing it back in the house. These have been revived as a way of not polluting water sources elsewhere in the city.

    2. Making of clay models of Ganapatis which are said to dissolve faster than the currently used plaster of paris ones.

    3. Lalbaug Ganapati mandal (the organisation which manages the festival at Lalbaug) are going for carbon credits to offset their carbon emissions.

    4. Purchase of idols from organisations such as NASEOH (National Society for Equal Oppertunities for the Handicapped)

    5. Reviving traditions of Maharashtra among school children by organising plays, fancy dress competitions etc. These are better ways to spread Marathi culture, which once you’re acquainted with are really great to read about.

    6. Lesser noise and sensible use of loud speakers. There’s been really less noise compared to last year. The sensible noise pollution rules have been well implemented this year.

    7. Pestom Sagar Citizen’s Forum converting waste PoP into bricks

    Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the man who started these celebrations to bring unity among Indians against British rule is hopefully proud of such socially and ecologically aware celebrations. Next year, I hope organisers will take the next step in preserving and representing the culture so that it is preserved for generations –

    1. Video recordings of gatherings,activities etc.

    2. maps on Google or Yahoo! on locations of Ganapati mandals. 

    3. sharing photos on sites like Picasa and Flickr and even integrating it with maps.

    4. records of electricity used and decibels recorded for looking at possible ways to save electricity.

    These are just pointers. I hope that much more is done to try and integrate and save traditional practises through modern medias.

  • BarCamp MU 3

    I missed most of the morning show of BarCampMU3 because I had to rush to college to pay the exam fees that would allow me to sit for the exams for my sixth semester.

     The first session post-lunch was on Photovoltaic technology for cost reduction. This was presented by Gaurav Shah, who is about to register a start-up soon called Electrik Solutions, which is hoping to dabble in the photovoltaic (PV) technology markets. He tells us that while manufacturing costs are about to be lowered with the coming of the third generation of PV cells, India is still stuck in the first. So, Electrik will first concentrate on building the second generation PV cells in India. He’s looking for electric engineers who would like to dabble in PV technology.

    Amit Gogna gave the second talk on the first implemented pilot projects of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) programme in India. The Indian Government refused to backup the OLPC programme, when it was offered the deal that was also offered to other governments, thinking it might produce a less than $100 laptop in India. Reliance ADA is the one that is stimulating this pilot study in a village called Khairat, near Mumbai. The best part of the presentation was probably the photo-op session that the laptop got after the presentation. Everyone has heard of the laptop, no one has actually seen it. According to Amit, the laptop, if brought to India today would cost about $205 [≈ Low-end bicycle]. He also called for more help on developing the applications for the laptop based on the Indian scenario.

    The third talk in the afternoon was given by a Swiss travelling to Mumbai for one of his projects, Renaud Richardet. He gave a presentation on the community aspects of open source. He talked a lot about how to select mailing lists and on looking at the reward systems. He’s working on an CMS project called Apache Lenya. 

    The last presentation of the day was given by Rahul Gupta, an IIT-B alumni, working on a start-up – Vakow! The name is inspired from a R D Burman song. It is something you should check out yourself to see how it works. He probably put it best for the people who were around there, when he said – “Vakow is for SMSs what Flickr is for photos”.

    The last major announcement was about the BarCampMumbai and the first BlogCampMumbai being held in the IIT-B campus on 29th March 2008.