Artwork by Akshita Arora
From conversation on:
Sep 27, 2020
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It's wondrous just imagining space and the infinite bounds of our existence! Making things worth sending out there designed to explore the unknown, precise every bit in an immeasurable infinity, is a pursuit far from any trivialities. Have you wondered about the questions, ideas and inspiration it takes to scale a leap up to these marvels in space? In the grandest scheme of things, expanding our reaches out in space has perhaps been the most astonishing and awe-inspiring feat in human history. In conversation with Dr. R. V. Ramanan, an eminent scientist from the Indian Space Research Organization- the crucial brilliance behind the fundamental concept of multi-satellite launch and separation, which also led to ISRO’s world record milestone of launching 104 satellites in a single launch in 2017, Dr. R.V. Ramanan’s striking ingenuity is strongly complemented by his warmth and humility. In the conversation, he talks about his journey, fascinating anecdotes, and quintessential insights from the exceedingly challenging field of Spaceflight Mechanics and Astrodynamics and what it takes to literally shoot for the stars and beyond!
..when we start anything, that fear of the unknown will be there. It may look simple but that is something I used to say in classes also – nothing is simple, nothing is obvious, nothing is trivial.. Now we have sent 104 satellites in a launch, but ‘98 we started with two!
ABOUT THE GUEST
Dr. R.V. Ramanan Adjunct Professor (Retd.), Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology
An illustrious scientist from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and a veteran in the industry of space sciences, Dr. Ramanan is one of the pioneers in the Indian chapter to have explored the dynamic field of Spaceflight Mechanics and Astrodynamics. He pursued his Bachelors in Mathematics and Masters in Applied Mathematics from the Madurai Kamaraj University. Following this, he joined the Vikram Sarabhai Space Center in 1984 as a scientist and served for a span of 26 years during which, he worked on a plethora of distinct applied research disciplines, broadly covering the integrated aspects of Space Mission Design and Analysis, Orbit raising and maneuvering studies, and Optimization with main focus on transfer trajectory design of various space missions. Among his numerous significant contributions, he notably served as the Deputy Project Leader (of the Mission division) for the Moon Impact Probe Project of the well-known first Chandrayaan or the Moon-mission of ISRO, planned the Mangalyaan mission to Mars, and is the crucial person behind the fundamental idea of multi-satellite launches that ISRO currently uses. He shifted to academia in 2010 and took up the role of an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at IIST till his retirement in the year 2020.
Transcript
Naman Jain (Host 1) :
Welcome to a brand-new episode of Zeroing In! I am Naman Jain and hosting this episode with me today is Garima Aggarwal, who recently completed her Masters in Aerospace Engineering at Caltech and has worked in the field of trajectory optimization and low earth orbit constellation design, much of which has been in strong collaboration with our guest for today. In conversation with us today is an illustrious scientist from Indian space research organisation or ISRO, and a veteran in the industry of space sciences. One of the pioneers in the Indian chapter to have explored the dynamic field of space flight mechanics and astrodynamics , he pursued his bachelors in mathematics and masters in applied mathematics from the Madurai Kamaraj University. Following this, he joined the Vikram Sarabhai space centre in 1984 as a scientist and served for a span of 26 years during which he worked in a plethora of distinct applied research disciplines, broadly covering the intricate aspects of space mission design and analysis , orbiterizing and manoeuvring studies and optimization with main focus on transfer trajectory design for various space missions. Among his numerous significant contributions , he notably served as the deputy project leader of the mission division for the moon impact probe project of the well-known Chandrayaan-1 or the moon mission of ISRO. He also planned the Mangalyaan mission to mars, and is the crucial person behind the fundamental idea of multi satellite launches that ISRO currently uses and employs. He shifted to academia in 2010 and took up the role of adjunct professor in the department of aerospace engineering at IIST. His intimidating brilliance and ingenuity is strongly complemented with great warmth and humility. In our conversation with him, we discover more about his journey and hear further on his insights and perspectives of an exceedingly fascinating and equally challenging feat of space exploration in this present context and what it takes to literally shoot for the stars and beyond. Extending a very warm welcome to Dr.R.V.Ramanan.
Naman :
Good Morning sir! We would like to start with a discussion about your formative years. What did your childhood aspirations look like or if you had any role model while growing up?
Dr. R. V. Ramanan :
In childhood, I didn’t have any role model to be honest . I was born in a small village and we were all brought up in a village atmosphere. I was studying in a small government school in a nice environment. Unlike you people, we were all playing for most of the time. We were not studying, going to tuition and so on. We were enjoying life. We did not have time to think of anything else actually. I starting thinking after getting out of school and entering college. I started looking at people, mostly my teachers. In my opinion, role models can be from your surroundings only. Maybe somebody else can be called role models, like Ekalayva had Dronacharya, but we don’t know them directly about their real character. Venkatachary, from my college, taught me astronomy. I used to think I should teach like him - not now, long ago. But he is the person. He had an influence on me to work on space related problems. Actually, I didn’t know what I had to do but he is the man who induced my thinking to work on space missions.
Naman :
Yes Sir, this is a curious bit. I would like to follow up here. You say that you had these professors in your college who were quite inspiring. And you were studying mathematics as well right? How did these things two come together for you? Like researching space-related topics and fundamental mathematics? Did you have this at the back of your head that you wanted to take this up together?
Dr. Ramanan :
To be honest, I didn’t know what I want to do. I wanted to be in space (field). I wanted to work in space! I wanted to be a scientist. At that time, people believed engineer means he will be involved in construction. I also thought so actually. Being from a village, I also thought being an engineer I will be involved in some type of field activity which I said I’m not for that. I want to be a scientist. Then somebody told me you have to study your masters in science. Then I went on. My luck led me to a college to do my masters where space flight mechanics is taught. Maybe that is the only college in the whole south which teaches space flight mechanics, one of its subjects (the whole subject) . That is one thing. I had exposure to space mechanics even in my masters’ days. Then I thought – I made the right decision to do masters in that. Actually, for any subject, to do design, a strong mathematical background is required. Though I had all eligibilities to become an engineer, mark wise etc, I never thought of that. But my parents did not influence me. They just left me. Too much interference is not there, of course. Whatever life takes on, it went on actually. That is why I believe in God. God led all to this type of life.
Naman :
This is quite interesting to know. And there is this continuing idea of carefree discovery that stands out. Taking this towards a technical side, we would like to discover more about how you continued this pursuit further in the initial years of joining the Indian Space Research Organization. Looking at your research works, such as developing analytical algorithms for lunar and interplanetary transfer trajectory design, lunar distant and assess missions, halo orbit transfer trajectories, low thrust optimal transfer trajectory mission, low earth orbit constellation design, to name a few of these, these are extremely intimidating topics to look at from the outside of the field and I’m sure quite challenging to take up as well. Can you talk about how this flow took on for you?
Dr. Ramanan :
Yeah, when we joined, unlike now in ISRO, not many launch vehicle missions were there. Only once in three or four years, there used to be launches. Once we do the job to meet these missions, we had lot of spare time and how to spend the spare time, we had to think. This obviously is research. We have to do some research. My boss used to tell me, if you do your regular job, you are getting salary for that. If you want promotion you must do something extra. That is what research he meant. That type of thing motivated us to do research. People around us were research oriented. Now I think ISRO is harvesting that type of people, that thinking. If we do research now, future people will be harvesting. That is what you know, always we know, those who are planting trees may not be enjoying, the fruits will be enjoyed by somebody else – the future generations. It is something similar to that. In 84 I joined, immediately after the training etc. I went to my boss and checked. (I said) “I want to work in interplanetary mission”, then he was taken aback, (he said)“Ok, fine, you start.”. Nobody knows where to start. Unlike now when you can do search by giving key words and get the necessary details in the Internet, then we had to go to the library and search for the literature. It almost took one year for me to know what I have to do to reach other planets. That knowledge was not readily available. Now my students will do it in less than a month, When I started reading more, I realized I had to solve Lambert’s problem. I had JPL reports. JPL reports list the mission opportunities, but not the methodologies. These reports don’t talk about solutions or how do you solve the problems, how do you arrive at the solutions, but provide a compilation of data analysis , opportunities and related details. I had that book certainly. Mercury was the first one I generated. When I generated and shared the information to my boss, I showed a line (orbit) and told him I can exactly reproduce this, he was overjoyed and he called everyone and said ”here is something that JPL could (only) do, and we are able to do that (as well)” ). That moment was enjoyable. We got such encouragement. All the people were so happy. Then the work went on and we expanded the inter planetary work. Later on, the idea came that India may not go for an interplanetary mission but instead, it may go for a moon mission. Then I started (working on this). Anyway, I already had the background, so putting them (knowledge) into use for moon mission was not difficult. In fact, I took up the moon mission design – transfer trajectory design - for my Ph.D. I have been trying for Ph.D. since my joining in ’84 but I could succeed only after 16 years. That was the (kind of) success I had. Before that, of course, I had done many publications. There were many opportunities earlier to be taken up for Ph.D. Though they came in search of me, I could not take them (due to delay). Maybe God wanted me to take this topic. In ’92 , Load thrust trajectory is the first one I took. That was between ’91 and ’92. Then later on again another opportunity came in ’94 – ’96. It was (regarding) Lagrangian point, halo orbit. But that also did not happen. Finally, this opportunity of Lunar mission came up and it worked. Like this, mission after mission we were working. As I mentioned, spare time was there due to less launch missions, and also, I was fortunate to have family’s cooperation. This helped me to work continuously.
Garima Aggarwal (Host 2) :
Right, sir, as a follow up of your previous discussion, where you actually talked about Mercury – like you reproduced the Mercury mission trajectory – so I would like to say, it was actually the Lambert’s problem which was a well-known curious puzzle in the field of orbital mechanics at that time, and the problem dealt with finding a trajectory joining two points in space for a given flight duration. So almost equally well known was the Battin solution which I guess you are talking about, for being one of the most robust yet complicated procedures . And yet you actually ended up implementing within one year after joining ISRO. So as a follow up, you worked in an era when Computers were the size of a room with very little computational power, so how did it actually affect your experience or your research, when you had to solve problems and come up with solutions?
Dr. Ramanan :
The very fact that the computer power was limited is the motivation to develop analytical techniques. Problems like CFD, Lagrangian point missions took hours or days to run at that point in time with no solutions. This type of situation made people go for analytical solutions which will serve as a good initial guess for (starting) numerical procedure. That is the motivation (behind analytical solution). But when you are talking about Battin, Battin (solution) was not the first method I implemented. I implemented the true anomaly iteration that I teach my students. It is a simple method. I read many other methods, but finally chose the true anomaly iteration method because it impressed me since it was simple and could be implemented by 2 lines of code. I tried that and it worked. I used Battin (solution) later, when multiple opportunities were pursued that involved varying flight duration, departure date etc. These could result in hyperbolic orbit or elliptical orbit or some other special types of orbit. But the computer might get stuck up (due to computational load). The numeric procedure should be able to take care of all types of scenarios. Battin (solution) does that. So, in such scenarios, Battin (solution) was implemented. Talking of role models-before joining ISRO, I did not know about Battin. But after I joined ISRO and was searching, I came to know about him (Richard Battin (of Harvard)). He is a great man. I used to think of him as Dronacharya and I am Ekalayva. I used to think “I should become like him”.
Garima :
Ok. I would like to ask –When we talked about true anomaly and universal anomaly, it somehow reminded me of the coordinate system we had to deal with, even as students in your class, we got to know that you have actually developed a general-purpose propagation tool that is capable of handling 16 different coordinate frames. So, what was that development cycle? And was it like a part of your process of developing the Battin solution?
Dr. Ramanan :
What you are talking about is General Orbit Prediction Software– I call it GROPS. That is not related to Battin. It is a propagation software. Battin (solution) is about determining the conics. GROPS is (used), given a conic, to study the motion of the spacecraft in that particular conic. This was part of my work I carried out, during my tenure with DLR, West Germany. DLR is equivalent of ISRO in West Germany. I was working there for some time. They wanted to develop some code which is equivalent to Geodine. Geodine is the JPL code which takes care of all forces into account and studies the motion of the spacecraft. They wanted to have their own analysis code of this type, which is equivalent of Geodine. At that time, we had DLR ISRO collaborative program. It is a type of exchange. It was happening. Because of my background in interplanetary missions, I had the opportunity to go there and work. GROPS is part of that work. As you said, it handles 16 coordinate systems. It can study the motion about any planet including sun, and also whether it is ecliptic-based frame or earth equator or any planet equator, it handles all that. Everything is embedded in it. It can study the motions of interplanetary spacecraft accounting for all forces including solar radiation pressure , drag around the planet Venus drag model, Mars drag model , earth drag model-all drag models are included in it. Also, Mars’ non-spherical force, Venus’ - every planet has non uniform gravity field - everything is modelled. Like this, you can study the motion of spacecraft around any planet as well as interplanetary spacecraft. That is GROPS.
Naman :
Thank you sir. It is quite insightful to have an idea about this thing. For someone (amateur) who has not worked in the field also, this makes quite a lot of sense. Maybe right now we can jump a little bit and I would like to ask you something in context with - in 2017 as we know ISRO set a world record for the most number of satellites in single launch with one hundred and four satellites on P.S.L.V. So, this journey of multi satellite separation for ISRO began almost 2 decades ago in 1998. And you were one of the first major contributors in the mission design, as we believe. So, would you like to talk about that project and what challenges it brought along for you and how did you carve out the implementation?
Dr. Ramanan :
Yeah, that’s right. Anything first when we start, that fear of the unknown will be there. It may look simple. I used to tell in the classroom also – nothing is simple, nothing is obvious, nothing is trivial. We have to take everything seriously. Now we have sent a hundred satellites. In ’98 we started with two satellites – one Korean and one German. Kitsat and Tubsat two things were there along with IRS (Oceansat-1). We had to house them. New problem we had (to handle) was – all of them were released with very small differences in velocity. For small satellites like IRS and Kitsat, the difference in velocity was less than one metre per second. That means they have almost similar energy and they will come back to the same location after a period of time. Period will not change. Once you say energy is the same, the period is the same for the (given) planet. Where they have started, they tend to come back to the same location and collision is possible. That is the problem. You have to inject them with whatever small bands for each of them available. We have to inject them such that they will not collide with each other in the future in the long term – maybe 10 years, 15 years. That was the major problem to handle at that time. If a small satellite hits the IRS, it will be a dangerous situation. We wanted to avoid that. Losing the IRS was a big problem – it was an expensive satellite. That was the challenge – how to release the satellites in such a way that they will not come back and hit the main satellite and also, they will not have collisions among themselves? That problem was purely orbit related – so obviously I had to work on that. Since I was interested in working on new problems, I grabbed the problem and started working. As usual, I always look for analytical solutions. This problem was solved by the French – they tried a lot of combinations. What are the parameters? The velocity with which the satellite is released is the main parameter, two satellites are there – one IRS and the other is a small satellite like KitSat. Suppose we release with one meter per second (velocity) the major portion will go to Kitsat as it is the smaller mass. Also, in which direction should the satellite be released? Those are the two parameters. Release velocity and direction of release and also time duration between release of the two satellites. So, we had to release three satellites (IRS, Kitsat, Tubsat) one after the other. The French played around using the three parameters, using thousands of different (random) combinations of them and selected the one that did not result in a collision for maximum duration. That was the brute force method. But I wanted to find an analytical solution - closed form solution. So I found all combinations which will result in collision (I reversed the problem). Then I chose a different combination apart from these. The collision combinations can be quickly found. That was a method I developed. I drew the design curve for the collisions and chose a point that was not there on the curve. This method was used also. All the parameters were accordingly found out. So, the IRS was released in its orbit, and the PLSV fourth stage was reoriented to release Kitsat and again reoriented to release Tubsat. Those orientations were what that was worked out. They were released and the mission was successful. First time we made multiple satellite launches. Now we perform 100 satellite launches. My colleagues are still working on the code that I developed. You have to put model after model because they are different satellites and so they need different models. But the concept and method remain the same. Only the computations have become expensive and complex. And computers today have become fast enough to do such things. You can always work out a combination that results in non-collision among themselves (satellites).
Garima :
After a follow-up, I would like to ask about the part where you mentioned that ISRO reoriented the fourth stage in the same orbit. After the reorientation, does the fourth stage continue to go around in the same orbit as the IRS? Or does the orbit actually change?
Dr. Ramanan :
Very small inclination change will be there. When you change the orientation, practically you will not feel the change. It will be 0.01 or 0.02 degrees only. Nut that is sufficient to push it into a different plane. In space, 0.01 matters. And also, because of the velocity difference and duration, the period of them is slightly different. They are sent into different planes and their energy level is different and so their period is different. So, they won’t come back to the point of release simultaneously. They will cross the point at different time intervals. And the relative difference (time difference) will keep on increasing. So which combination will do this? There are dangerous combinations which will lead to exact collisions. That’s why we have to be careful. So, we need to avoid such combinations and choose the combinations that build up the relative difference with time.
Garima :
I was also fascinated with the fact that you could find all the combinations that result in collisions. One thing is you talked about the brute force method and using analysis solutions to find all possible combinations. It makes me wonder- how did you account for all kinds of perturbations? Space is full with perturbations that you can predict (only) up to a certain limit. But after ten-fifteen years the difference becomes so huge that people end up using computers these days to account for the perturbation effect.
Dr. Ramanan :
That’s a very good, highly technical question. Fortunately, our satellites reach higher altitudes. So, except drag, all other forces have the same effect, they are independent of mass, maybe solar radiation pressure to a certain extent. Whether it is J2 (perturbations),non-spherical Earth, sun, moon- all of them will act in the same way on all spacecraft. So, the relative difference will be kept (more or less) the same. That’s the beauty of it. The whole situation would be different if you do it within the atmosphere- because there it is exposed to drag. Heavier objects will have more drag and lighter objects will have less drag. That can cause anything to happen-that cannot be predicted. So fortunately, in our problem, satellites are in the weak atmosphere. So, in such a problem, dealing with perturbations is not a major issue. If you do it without perturbations, then it is almost the same as with perturbations. Of course, with perturbation, closed-form solution is not possible. I have a combination that I have worked out. I introduced all the perturbations and simulated them to check whether they really affect the solution. So that’s one way to confirm whether the combination works well under perturbations.
Garimal :
That’s a smart way - not using perturbation, getting a solution and then using that specific combination to run under the perturbation model to verify.
Dr. Ramanan :
Nature has given us so many simple things. We only make it complex. If we understand correctly, all problems can be solved easily. That’s what I believe.
Garima :
Definitely with time and number of satellites we keep launching in a single launch, the complexity of the solution will increase multifold.
In 2008, ISRO launched the first Indian lunar probe under chandrayaan-1 mission. The mission was a major boost to India’s space program as India researched and developed its own technology in order to explore the moon. You have played a significant role as the deputy project leader of the moon impact probe mission of the chandrayaan-1. Would you like to share with us the experience of the chandrayaan-1 mission conception, design and development cycle?
Dr. Ramanan :
Yeah. Actual project started in 2004. The work on the lunar mission started in 1994-96. We did this within Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC). We had task teams to shape the project specifications in detail. We did that in 96-98. Slowly it took shape into a full project mode. Ex-ISRO chairman Dr.Kasturirangan gave shape to this project. Then Dr.Madhavan Nair realized (implemented) it. When we were doing Chandrayaan-1, after the project design became clear, former President Dr.APJ Abdul Kalam came to VSSC. We were presenting the Chandrayaan design to him for review, and he said “Anyway you are going so far to a distant place, why don’t you put something on the moon surface?”. Then immediately we were asked to work-out the mass that can be accommodated to be put on the moon surface. But already the mass budget was tight. It had to be a mini-satellite itself with all the subsystems on board. Later we worked it out to be thirty-five Kg. Then we worked out, as usual, some strategy to save some fuel. Anyway, that did not become popular. But initially, our strategy was – after reaching there, we should perform orbit reduction. We should start reducing from perigee. We want to reduce orbit from five hundred by five thousand to hundred by hundred. This can be done in many ways. Normally, reduction is done at apogee. But our idea was to reduce at perigee as well as at apogee. This saved about seven to eight Kg of fuel. So, this type of requirement also leads to new strategies. We would have never thought of that if not for the requirement. We were more used to GTO to GSO rising, so we thought we could do this in a similar way. But this asked us to think in a different way. We named it Episternum biasing strategy. It was used in all other future missions. Like this, we worked out in different places. Earlier we thought of targeting a thousand and reducing it to five hundred, but that consumes fuel, so instead of that, we targeted five hundred directly which would save a lot of fuel. So, we started thinking about its complications. Navigation system had to be very accurate. When you are targeting closer to the moon, if any navigation error occurs and it judges wrongly, then it may result in impact also. So that type of risk was there. So, we had to revisit our navigation system and we were able to convince that we can easily reduce the target to five-hundred and we can make room for some more mass that way. We worked out similar strategies and finally we were able to accommodate moon impact probe also. Chandrayaan-1 – that was a roaring success. Nothing was equal to that first success.
Garima :
As a follow-up, we know that India’s Chandrayaan-1 played a crucial role in the discovery of water molecules on the moon. It was indeed Chandrayaan-1’s data which showed the evidence for water in the exosphere of the moon. But it was only later that NASA confirmed the discovery of water locked in minerals on the moon using its own mineralogy map. What do you have to say about the golden opportunity that we lost to declare to the world about our discovery of water on the lunar surface at that time?
Dr. Ramanan :
For science, we need repeatability and proofs. That was the issue here. The mineralogy mapping, we call it M-3, was part of Chandrayaan-1 also. In fact, MIP (Moon Impact Probe) itself found water while descending (on the moon). We knew about the result two weeks after the descent. It came from the analysis of a spectrometer attached. We were told in a meeting that a ground-making discovery had been made, but we were not told what it was. We knew that we had found water on the moon or something like that. But, like any science experiment, it requires repeatability. But MIP was a one-time experiment. To be made known publicly, science demands that it had to be repeatable and because of that, some delay was there. After M-3 had found it, we also confirmed the discovery of water. But we knew it one year before. We cannot blame the team also because doubts will always be there. It could have been outgassing also. Water might have been deposited on MIP and the instrument might have detected that. Doubts like that are natural. We had to prove that there is no outgassing. We tried. But still, repeatability is a major issue. That’s what delayed, in my opinion, the release of the great result that MIP found water.
Naman :
That’s quite a quintessential story about how science works in a larger context and especially regarding the biggest of discoveries. We would like to tread along the next major transitive career trajectory wherein soon after the launch and success of the chandrayaan-1 mission, close in 2010, you made a decision to shift to academia as an adjunct professor in IIST. Would you like to talk more about your motivation for shifting from the setup as a scientist to the academic setup as an adjunct professor at IIST at that point in time?
Dr. Ramanan :
Honestly, I was very disturbed by the fact that even now astrodynamics is not a well-known area in India. Except in ISRO, or probably in DRDO, nowhere else this kind of research is going on. Of course, teaching might be present in some places. But serious research in this area actually goes on only in these types of organizations only. I never thought about shifting to academia before IIST came. When the opportunity came, I thought that I can go and (help) generate more people in the astrodynamics area. That was one motivation I had. And I think I succeeded at least to some extent in that notion because I could motivate at least some people to work in that area. That is one satisfaction I have in shifting to academia. And I know that I am not completely in IIST. Even now, I am a regular employee of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC). That way, my participation was there in projects like Mars Orbital mission, Chandrayaan-2 mission. That’s always there in my mind. My work nature is not going to be affected (by shifting to academia). I am going to work with more people and more problems of the similar kind. If you are in a particular organization, you are restricted to work in a particular area, some ethics is there, somebody would be working in that area and you cannot work in that area. That kind of situation arises. But in academia, there is no boundary for your thinking. That was one thing I liked about academia. You can work in any area of your liking, of course within whatever domain you chose. In academia, you can work with students. I get as many students, depending on my energy, to work with me. In ISRO, I have limited manpower. That’s another attraction I had. I can work with students on the same kind of problems and maybe I can expand my area (knowledge). And this opportunity came in search of me. I thank God for that. IIST started in Thiruvananthapuram and that’s probably why I could join.
Garima :
That’s quite a profound take on this idea. On that note, would you like to briefly talk about the kind of research you have carried out in the last few years with your students?
Dr. Ramanan :
Mostly, about the different types of missions only-because that is the area I’m interested in. So, we started working with Mars entry missions first. And then landing. And then low thrust missions. There is ion propulsion-how to reach other planets? There again, very good work has been done, where you include the gravity fields of planets – that is a very difficult task – optimal control and it is a marriage between these two. Apart from that, recently in constellation design I worked on Lunar mission – how to transfer a spacecraft from earth to moon and Lagrangian missions, Aditya mission because most of the projects I give shape keeping ISRO future missions in mind. So that way in Aditya mission, students worked actually developing methodologies to design the transfer trajectories to Lagrangian point. And then maintenance strategies. How to keep them around that(orbit) – what is the strategy? Rendezvous missions, similar to a shuttle where it goes and performs a rendezvous with some other module and it gets connected with the shuttle – that type of rendezvous problems also we worked out. All these are part of optimal control – because my core strengths are optimal control and optimization. Any trajectory person must be strong in these two areas.
Like this, so many problems we worked out. Mars landing, moon landing, moon transfer(orbit), mars transfer(orbit) Rendezvous problems, Lagrangian point mission problems and so on. We worked out so many problems that I lost count . I will make a list and maybe upload it on the website – actually some 20 problems not repeated so far, I would say that. I’m confident.
Naman :
This is extremely inspiring sir. Quite a combination of thought-provoking insights of the field, the applications there in and even further outside of the subject, what it takes to manifest these ideas in real life situations. It is difficult. It is really difficult to grasp the fact that we did not come across these stories and insights over all these years through our books or science magazines of any sorts. These understandings are extremely precious and It’s been really fortunate to have been able to talk to you and discuss these ideas in such detail . Thanks a lot, thanks a lot sir.
Dr. Ramanan :
Yeah It is a good initiative. You should keep talking and discussing. Actually, this is a one way knowledge grows, through exchange of knowledge. If you keep continuing such discussions with people, people will get to know about many things and it(knowledge) slowly spreads. And I thought this is one way for propaganda for Astrodynamics also. I’m very happy that I could do it with you people. Ok , good, Thank you.
Naman :
This was Zeroing In with Dr. R.V. Ramanan. It has been brought to you by The Sounding Rocket, in collaboration with the IIST Alumni Association from the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, Trivandrum. We extend our sincere gratitude to Dr.R.V.Ramanan for taking the time out and talking about the stories of wonder, his beautiful insights, and elaborate ideas with us. Along with Garima Aggarwal and Varshith Reddy for collaborating on this episode, on behalf of the whole Zeroing In team, which included KVNG Vikram, Fenil Shah, Manish Chauhan, Prajwal Patnaik, Shreya Mishra and I am Naman Jain- thanks a lot for listening to this episode. If you have any suggestions, you can write to us at zeroingin@outlook.com or contact and follow us on our Instagram handle @ZeroingInPodcast or “The Sounding Rocket” page in Facebook. Thanks a lot for listening to this episode and we will meet you on the other side of the week.