Tag: ISRO

  • GSAT-5P to be launched on December 20

    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 December 13, 2010 as per the time stamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    On December 20, 2010, India will replace the ageing INSAT-2E communications satellite. The satellite has served India since 1999 by providing telecommunication, television broadcasting and meteorological services.

    The launch of GSAT-5P which is to take place from Sriharikota will use the Russian cryogenic engine for the third stage of the GSLV. Hence, this is designated as the GSLV Mk-I. The vehicle is already on the launch pad and was moved there and anchored on Sunday. Last week, the satellite, GSAT-5P was placed inside the heat shield.

    The significant events before launch between 4 and 4:30 pm 5:30 pm on December 20, include a full systems check today, followed by a launch rehersal without the liquid and cryogenic fuel on December 17.

    There has only been one successful PSLV and one failed GSLV that has taken place this year in Sriharikota this year. I am guessing scientists will be anxious to get this launch right. This is another reason why the spotlight is falling back on this launch. The GSLV has been a programme with mixed results with 3 successes and 3 failures.

    Once ISRO updates its website with more information I will carry more detailed article on the subject here.

    [This post is based on this news report.]

  • India going to study the Sun

    This blog post was recovered from the Way Back Machine and may have existed on many avatars of the previous blogs that I owned. Some links are broken.

    Immediately after the successful launch of Chandrayaan-I, then ISRO Chairman Madhavan Nair announced Aditya-1, a spacecraft to study our Sun. Updates coming over the last one month have updates on this ISRO mission as well as interest in Solar Physics.

    Aditya-1 is a 100 kg spacecraft under development by ISRO in association with Udaipur Solar Observatory, Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Radio Astronomy Centre and National Centre for Radio Astrophysics. This Rs. 50 crores space based solar observatory will be in a 600 km low Earth orbit and is expected to fly in 2012 close to Solar Maxima.The spacecraft will

    Reports indicate that the Indian Institute of Astrophysics has completed the design of the solar coronagraph. ISRO is working on developing the detectors and thermal structure. First spacecraft prototype is expected in 2011. While the main idea is to study coronal mass ejections (CMEs), ISRO hopes to utilise the data to know how to better protect its satellite systems in orbit.

    The IIA is also involved in the development of a ground based solar observatory in the Himalayas with national and international mission. The fabrication of the telescope is expected to begin in 2010 with IIAp has already floated the tender.

  • Past Week in Space #1

    A hopefully weekly column in this blog that seeks to track the weekly space news. It doesn’t have the usual NASA/ESA traffic unless it is important. I think there are enough blogs/forums out there covering such things without having to add something of my own. The timeline is in reverse chronology.

    1. The NASA’s M3 team which has been discussing the science behind the mission on its blog announced the final result of its efforts by announcing that the M3 had found iron-bearing minerals on the lunar surface. Data from this 7 kg mapper on board Chandrayaan 1 provides an opportunity for scientists to look at the Moon with high spatial and spectral resolution.
    2. The ISRO chairman said that anyone who is “young, healthy, physically active and has a terrific spirit of adventure” can come and be a part of India’s cosmonaut corps. This is an oppertunity that I guess, many of you have been waiting for!
    3. Europe got its first dark sky park in southern Scotland this week. As the report clarifies further this is a recognised park by the International Dark-Skies Association. There are also only two other dark sky parks – one in Utah and another in Pennsylvania.
    4. Every Christmas the guys at the top-secret NORAD use their useful and super-secret equipment to track Santa. In this venture they have tied up with Know-it-All Google giants. Here is Santa going past the Taj Mahal(YouTube video) captured using its top secret web cams and advanced surviellance cameras. These cameras are used only once in a year to track Santa.
    5. ISRO also updated its website with more images from Chandrayaan 1’s . The images posted on the Chandrayaan 1 website has very poor captioning. I do hope that with the announcement of more missions like the manned space flight and mission to Mars, ISRO’s information skills improve. The images were updated on December 24.
    6. Chairman, ISRO announced a slew of missions at the CII conference in Delhi. Confirmed are the fact that Chandrayaan II’s design is ready and that the agency was on the road to putting a rover on the Moon by 2012. It also announced the year of India’s Mars Mission – 2013. Following these more robotic missions involved landing a space craft on an asteroid and a comet flyby mission. On the Indian human space flight front, Indians are going to fly on board a Russian space craft in 2013 and will fly in an indigenous space craft in 2015.
    7. A state of the art communication satellite jointly built by Antrix/ISRO and EADS Astrium for one of Europe’s largest telecom operators Eutelsat was successfully launched from Kourou, French Guyana. The satellite weighing a huge 3463 kgs lifted off on an Ariane-5 rocket at 0405 hrs (IST) on December 21. ISRO completed the satellite in a cool 26 months at a cost of $80 million. The Economic Times reported that Antrix/ISRO made a handsome $40 million profit from the same. The Ariane 5 placed the satellite in Geosynchronus Transfer Orbit or GTO after which ISRO controlled the satellite from its Master Control Facility or MCF-Hassan, stabilized the satellite with repeated Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) firing to place it in final orbit and deployed its appendages.
    8. In another rocketry related event at ISRO this week, ISRO tested the new indigenously developed cryogenic engine. The test was conducted at the Mahendragiri facility of the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC). The engine will be used on the third stage of Geosynchronus Satellite Launch Vehicle or GSLV. The engine develops a thrust of 73kN in vaccum with a specific impulse of 454 seconds. The engine works on staged combustion cycle and runs an integrated turbopump at a speed of 42000rpm. This will allow GSLV to place a 2200 kg payload in Geosyncrhonus Transfer Orbit.

  • People behind Chandrayaan-1

    On Chandrayaan I’s coverage on NDTV there are exclusive interviews with the scientists and technicians who have made the various online instruments on board Chandrayaan I.

    1. Dr. Mylswamy Annadurai – He’s the Project Director of Chandrayaan I. There was a small note about him in the Times of India. He said designing Chandrayaan 1 was like writing lyrics for a set tune. He’s also from a district next door to my home town. He’s from near Pollachi, Coimbatore.
    2. J A Kamlakar – an expert on LASERS. His instrument on board Chandrayaan I will help measure height variation on the moon’s surface.
    3. Dr. Manuel Grande – Principal Investigator CIXS ( Chandrayaan I Xray Sepctrometer). Doug Ellison made an animation on this instrument.
    4. Dr. Urs Mall – SIR 2 (Near Infra Red Spectrometer)
    5. Dr. Stas Barabash – SARA

    I’m sure that the names indicate to you the international team that has instruments on board the Chandrayaan I. It is a special feeling to have your instruments on board a space craft and to see it fly and I hope every one of you gets an opportunity to have that experience. The last rant doesn’t mean that the technology and people behind Chandrayaan 1 isn’t cool, just that it would be a lot cooler if they shared some of their thoughts with us.

    The specialised NDTV page on Chandrayaan is here.

  • 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.

  • Space Spin-off presentation at ISHRAE competition

    The Indian Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers (ISHRAE) held their Mumbai eliminations of the national Project Idea competition in our college. I participated in the same and presented an idea that explored a possible space spin-off that I am eager to follow up on.

    I presented the idea of using composite materials used in space crafts and which was recently tested by Space Reentry Experiment 1 by ISRO in use in building material so that they provide heating and cooling to the room inside.  Right now, the idea works only for totally insulated situations (like in space crafts). I am yet to work out how air circulation can be achieved within the room.

    In the end, I visualise, temperature control by simple turning of fan dials and also adding a coat of composite material to be as simple as adding a coat of water proof paint on buildings. I wasn’t able to present it so well that they might select me to represent the Mumbai region for the national level competition but I am keen on following up with the technology aspects of this. It requires sufficient idea of material sciences.

    (This idea is protected under the Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution and ShareAlike license as are rest of the content on this blog)

  • Space and Ham Radio

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://blogs.seds.org/pradeep. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on December 15, 2007 as per the timestamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    I fell in love with ham radios in 2004 when I was an electronics student (as an elective) in my junior college. In the same year, I read Maryam’s blog and saw that ham radios can be used in space arena too. It was only the exams that I had to give to obtain a ham license that made me think twice. At that point, I had written a string of engineering admission tests that was driving me nuts and I couldn’t handle another test.

    At the SEDS International Conference 2007, some of the earlier interest was re-kindled and also an amazing ‘discovery’. ISRO had a ham radio club.

    2 + 2 = 4 !!!

    It would be really great if we could establish a ham radio club in every SEDS chapter in India. Besides performing scientific experiments and performing basic satellite communication operations if needed, it also opened another door – a way of talking to ISRO and literally!

    ISRO has a ham radio club at most of its centres – Thumba Amateur Radio Club (VU2TRC) at VSSC, ISTRAC Amateur Radio Club (VU2FBS) at Bangalore, at the Master Control Facility (VU2MCF) at Hassan and the more famous Upagraha Amateur Radio Club (VU2URC) at Bangalore. This provides a great opportunity to talk to ISRO scientists who are not always phone and email friendly.

    Besides that, we could also talk to SEDS chapters all over the world for free (Internet and telephone still include costs) besides networking in India. Who wants to take the challenge first? This is also an opportunity for all hams who have a space interest!

    For more info, visit www.amsatindia.org.

  • Return trip from ISRO

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://blogs.seds.org/pradeep. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on June 18, 2007 as per the timestamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    Returning in the evening from ISRO Headquarters to a quarter of Bangalore called Majestic, we found our way out of maze of criss-crossing exits and finally pinned down a hotel where we could eat something light. As we settled down in the hotel, my mom called me asking if I was boarding my train.

    The re-booking that I talked about caused this confusion. I thought my train was at night and so decided to print my ticket only in the evening.

    I was now running across the crowded streets of Bangalore trying to find an internet cafe. Nagappan accompanied me and helped me in locating a cafe. Thanks a lot, Nagappan. In the run, we finally found a cafe where I got my tickets printed.
    Didn’t have the time to bid all the people there good-bye, but I hope that they’ll forgive me for that short-coming.

    Lo and behold. My train is in the next 45 minutes. I had to travel atleast 1 hour for getting to the station which I thought I should go to. But luckily my father booked the wrong station and that ended up being 15 minutes away. I have to say that Bangalore Station is a very confusing maze and more confusing when you’re confused.

    Finally jumped onto the train and I slept all the way to my hometown.

    I woke up realizing my station had come. I got up and ran to get down. I realized the train was moving and waited until it stopped but when I looked ahead I noticed that the train was moving out and not in. Luckily, it hadn’t gathered speed and so I just closed my eyes and jumped out.

    My dad, who had come to pick me up at the station had surmised that I might get out at the next station, but I managed to catch up with him. Most of that was a dream. All in all, a fun trip. Hope I was able to contribute something positive to the discussion we had at Bangalore.

    I’ve just returned from a month’s worth of vacation. Have lots to catch up on. Will reply to all emails and requests soon. Hang on!!

     

  • A Few Links…

    It’s really very funny experience if you want to blog about space. You love the subject. You can talk for hours, given the chance, but to write a good blog post will take you days and days.

    Well, all said and done, I have nothing useful to add today. Here are some links –

    1. India’s Chandrayaan-I project scheduled for departure on 30 March, 2008. Chandrayaan-II coming up in 2010.
    2. The recent testing of SRE and the launch of 3 sats together on the PSLV-C7.
    3.India’s best offering in terms of images of the Earth from  space – CARTOSAT-2.

  • Interesting Stuff from ISRO

    India has today announced the launching of its own navigation satellite system. The date for the launch of Chandrayaan-I has also been announced as 30 March, 2008. Mark the date in your calendars.

    There has also been talks of having a lunar lander by 2020. Interesting stuff coming from ISRO.