Indian Space Capabilities

[Neo]

no, it depends Neo, Are you talking of Aeronautical or Aerospace?
If Aeronautical the IIT's gives you and bachelors is best from there then you can get into job orinted work.

While in PHD, research et al, it is NAL/IISC/TIFR etc etc, NAL is highly respected instution, It is National Aerospace Limited, but i think they takes peoples after Phd or soemthing, one of my cousin is in NAL, he stood first in VIT in Bangalore and recieved prize from Kalam saab.

In Aeronautics you have NAL/HAL/ADA/ARDB these all are for research et al and involved in strategic projects.

Normally after Education people get into job oriented work and there are a lot of instutions giving you out works.

These days even HAL has seperate r&d workshop.

ARDB has some very nifty projects in its hand, you can check out the projects from drop down menu from their website..
http://www.drdo.com/boards/ardb/index.htm


Take for example the instutions working on LCA..



It is de-centralised, It depends , what course you want to pursue, bachelors / masters et al from where...hehe.

Wow, thats some network! Its all over the country...pfew!

 

[Always Neutral]

Spells good for India. Can anyone elighten me on the Pakistan Satellite Programmes. They can't be far behind the Indians ?

regards

 

[Bushroda]

Spells good for India. Can anyone elighten me on the Pakistan Satellite Programmes. They can't be far behind the Indians ?

regards

Pakistan is working on its own satellite project & they are going to launch it by 2011. This is as far as I know. Neo & other senior members can shed some more light.

 

[Bushroda]

India To Launch Dedicated Military Satellite CARTOSAT 2A To Monitor Missile Launches
Dated 10/6/2007

India will launch its first dedicated military satellite in August to give the country the capability to monitor missile launches in its neighborhood.

The dedicated military reconnaissance satellite, CARTOSAT 2A, will be launched on a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle rocket by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in the first week of August, an official said here.

CARTOSAT 2A will boast of spatial resolution and will be loaded with cameras that can supply advanced imagery. It will cater to military and intelligence specifications than any existing Indian satelite. The launch of the satellite will fulfil a long- standing demand from the armed forces for a dedicated reconnaissance spacecraft.

Launch of the first military satellite will be rapidly followed by the launch of two more advanced imaging satellites by next year to give India the capability of keeping an eye round-the-clock on the region surrounding the country.

Technical Specifications

CARTOSAT-2 will be an advanced remote sensing satellite with a single panchromatic camera capable of providing scene specific spot imageries for cartographic applications.

The satellite will have high agility with capability to steer along and across the track up to +45 degrees. It will be placed in a sun-synchronous polar orbit at an altitude of 630 km. It will have a revisit period of 4 days, which can be improved to one day with suitable orbit manoeuvres.

The panchromatic camera is designed to provide better than 1 m spatial resolution imageries with a swath of 10 km.

 

[Bushroda]

First flight of Hypersonic Technology Demonstrator Vehicle by end of next year

Ground test for scramjet propulsion system conducted

A leap forward: V.K. Saraswat, Chief Controller, DRDO, making a presentation on the eve of an international conference on ‘High-speed trans-atmospheric air and space transportation’ to be inaugurated in Hyderabad by President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam on Friday.

HYDERABAD: The first flight of the ambitious Hypersonic Technology Demonstrator Vehicle (HTDV), which will ultimately pave the way for launching a re-usable space capsule, will be held by the end of next year.

The ground test for HTDV scramjet propulsion system using kerosene as fuel has been conducted by DRDO scientists at a high speed material testing laboratory abroad and the results have been encouraging, according to V. K. Saraswat, Chief Controller (DRDO) and P. Venugopalan, director DRDL.

They were speaking to reporters here on Thursday on the eve of a two-day international conference on ‘High-speed trans-atmospheric air and space transportation to be inaugurated by President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam on Friday.

The development of hypersonic technologies and vehicles have been engaging the aerospace community the world over for applications in the areas of space sector for placing payload in near earth orbit at low cost, civil sector for reaching far off destinations in a short time and military sector for development of long range hypersonic cruise missile to effectively engage time-critical targets.

The USA, Russia, France, Germany, Japan, Australia and China are involved in the development of hypersonic technologies.

 

[Bushroda]

Isro plans to construct reusable launch vehicle

Hyderabad, June 29: The Indian Space Research Organisation has plans to construct a reusable launch vehicle demonstrator and air breathing propulsion modules. President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam told an international conference on high speed trans-atmospheric air and space transportation here on Friday that vehicles that could be reused 100 to 500 times would make space travel cheaper.

Dr Kalam said that the aeronautical community could also design air-breathing engines with high fuel efficiency. They could also help the space community design reusable launch vehicles that fly like an aircraft within in the atmosphere and like a rocket in space. "I visualise an industrial complex on the moon and a beginning of human habitation at Mars in 50 to 75 years," he said. "A major driving factor will be the low cost of access to the space", he added.

Feasibility studies were already on to send a manned mission to low earth orbit by 2014, said the President. Dr Kalam said that integration of multiple technologies will help construct unmanned supersonic aircraft which will replace manned fighter aircraft in the long run.

 

[Maddy]

Yes, do you know there is a CLASSIC foto...i cant find it now.

There were humble beginings for India...The FIRST satellite was taken to the launch center in Orrisa on a BICYCLE!

I cant find that image now...its such a beautiful image and classic image...nostalgic. It was published in Hindu once.

I am sure you are referring to these pictures .. enjoy

How India developed the SPACE STATION !!
http://www.mavenarts.com/idea/?p=188

Dont miss the young Abdul Kalam in one of the pics!

 

[Contrarian]

That is EXACTLY the picture i was refering to. Thanx a bunch mate!

 

[Adux]

India's first space university lifts off

23 July 2007

India's first space university is all set to lift off, to produce experts that can take the country's satellite and rocket programmes to higher orbits. The Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) will begin operating just after Independence Day from the campus of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre at Thiruvananthapuram next month.

The Institute, which offers technical courses in space science and technology, has already attracted some of India's brightest minds. "Our original plan was to recruit students from the extended list of the IIT joint entrance exam (IIT-JEE). But we got a large number of applicants from the main list itself," says G Madhavan Nair, Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which has set up the institute.

ISRO will create a full-fledged campus for the IIST at Ponmudi, near the Kerala state capital, which will be ready in about two years. Around 150 students will be enrolled in aeronautical and avionics engineering, and in the integrated MSc in space sciences, in the first academic year.

ISRO has set up the institute as it is faced with large-scale attrition with scientists leaving for better assignments in private industry and abroad. On the one hand it has been unable to attract the best talent. "Most of the students who come out of the IITs and IISc, Bangalore, either join management courses, the IT industry, or go abroad; they are not available to the Indian scientific community," Nair said.

The Bangalore-based ISRO gets over 70,000 applications each year, of which it short-lists around 1,500 after written tests. In the final selection, it has been unable to pinpoint even 200 with the right aptitude, when it requires around 300. "We cannot rely on the marks given by engineering colleges. We have to conduct our own tests. Finally, we get only a handful of people. So, we thought we need to catch the students at the plus-2 level (12th standard)," Nair, who is also the Secretary in the Department of Space, said.

The students will learn propulsion, aero dynamics, navigation, guidance, sub-systems, avionics, control systems, etc, so that ISRO can absorb them as soon as they pass out of the Institute. The course is heavily subsidised by ISRO, and the students joining the IIST have to sign a bond that they will work with the space agency for five years, or pay a large amount as penalty.



Other reports on

http://www.domain-b.com/aero/july/2007/20070723_university.htm

 

[Contrarian]

This is EXCELLENT NEWS!

 

[joey]

India plans to double satellite launches in USD 2 billion push
26 Jul 2007, 1312 hrs IST,PTI
TOI

BANGALORE: India plans to double its annual satellite launches and put into space up to 25 spacecraft in a USD 2 billion exercise spread over the next five years as it moves to take advantage of booming demand for capacity, top Indian Space Research Organisation officials say.

New Delhi has targeted to boost the number of transponders India currently has from 199 to 500 by the end of the 11th five year plan (March 2012), Secretary in the Department of Space G Madhavan Nair said.

"On the average, we may have about four to five launches in a year compared to hardly two that we are (currently) doing annually", Nair, also Chairman of ISRO and the Space Commission, said.

"That's one of the major loads not only on ISRO but on industry and other establishments in the country", he said.

ISRO officials estimate the cost involved in building these satellites and launching them in the region of Rs 8,000 crore-Rs 9,000 crore (approximately USD two billion-2.25 billion).

Bangalore-headquartered India's space agency plans to launch as many as 15 INSAT-class satellites and 8-10 remote sensing spacecraft by 2012 as it moves to stay ahead of the demand curve.

India to launch military satellite by year end
Rediff

July 29, 2007 15:31 IST

India is on the threshold of joining a select band of advanced countries by putting into orbit a dedicated military satellite.

The military-specific reconnaissance satellite CARTOSAT-2A will be launched on a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle by the Indian Space Research Organisation by the end of this year, ISRO officials said.

The satellite will give India the capability to keep tabs on missile launches in its neighbourhood.

CARTOSAT-2A was earlier programmed to be put into space by the first week of August, but its launch has now been scheduled for mid-September or early October, officials said.

Along with the country's own military satellite, ISRO is also planning to launch an Israeli reconnaissance satellite called POLARIS [Get Quote].

The Israeli satellite will ride piggyback on the 1,100-kg CARTOSAT-2A, and will be the third foreign satellite to be launched by ISRO, sources said.

CARTOSAT-2A will boast of spatial resolution and will be loaded with cameras that can supply advance imagery. It will cater full time to military and intelligence specifications, unlike existing Indian satellite.

The launch of the nation's first military satellite will be rapidly followed by launch of two more advanced imaging satellites by next year to give India a means to keep a close eye round-the-clock on the neighbouring region.

The first Radar Imaging Satellite carrying a C-BAND synthetic aperture radar will have a spatial resolution of three metres to 50 metres and a swath of 10 km to 240 km.

The second reconnaissance satellite to be launched by ISRO will be the OCEANSAT-2, with 8-band multi-spectral cameras, giving the spy vehicle the air a capability to keep a watch on a wide expanse of up to 1,420 km of the ocean to monitor the movement of naval surface warships and submarines.

Though ISRO sources were tightlipped, it is learnt that the Israeli military satellite POLARIS and CARTOSAT-2A can take pictures of the earth through cloud and rain, which no other Indian satellite has been able to do so far.

The launch of CARTOSAT-2A is being timed to coincide with the scheduled delivery of the country's first Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft by Israel to give the armed forces a network-centric platform for carrying out surveillance from the ground to the stratosphere.

The supply of the Phalcon AWACS is scheduled for early next year. India has signed a deal with Israel and Russia [Images] for purchase of three such AWACS, and has kept options open for the acquisition of three more.

The launch of the military satellite is being undertaken in tandem with the Indian Air Force's plan to set up an integrated air command, control and communication system.

The plan envisages the linking of AWACS, aerostat balloon radars and low-level transportable radars of the IAF with the dedicated military satellite.

With three advanced reconnaissance satellites in orbit, Indian military agencies will have the capability to keep an eye on the airspace over Pakistan and China and also to study the oceans and monitor changes in winds across the seas.

© Copyright 2007 PTI. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of PTI content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent.

 

[joey]

I'm wondering what Pakistan air traffic control uses? I think after GAGAN gets finished Pakistan will come under its augementation, because I think for international airlines in south Asia will follow only that as it will be compatible with WASS , MSAS and EGNOS.

 

[joey]

Anyone knows the answer to the question i asked above?

Monday, July 30, 2007

India's Space Ambitions Soar
A lunar mission and a reusable launch vehicle are planned.

By Mark Williams

As China's star has risen, there's been speculation about whether its expanding space program will trigger a space race with the United States. After all, Shenzhou spacecraft have twice carried taikonauts to orbit and back, and they might in principle support the manned moon mission that the Chinese claim they'll carry out by 2026--and even, maybe, by 2017, one year before NASA now foresees a return to the lunar surface. Still, the next-generation CZ-5 Long March launchers necessary for a manned moon mission by China remain unfunded, and, in general, its space program has so far only repeated decades-old American and Russian achievements.

Meanwhile, attracting far less attention and operating on a far smaller budget, that other rising Asian giant, India, has also been ramping up its space program--and it is developing some novel, promising approaches. This spring, India's then president, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam--a colorful scientist-technologist who loomed large from the success of his country's early satellite launch missions, and then led its guided-missile program--laid out (via teleconferencing ) an ambitious vision of India's future space efforts during his speech at a Boston University symposium.

Kalam told the international audience of space experts in Boston that, besides expanding its extensive satellite program, India now plans lunar missions and a reusable launch vehicle (RLV) that takes an innovative approach using a scramjet "hyperplane." Kalam said that India understands that global civilization will deplete earthly fossil fuels in the 21st century. Hence, he said, a "space industrial revolution" will be necessary to exploit the high frontier's resources. Kalam predicted that India will construct giant solar collectors in orbit and on the moon, and will mine helium-3--an incredibly rare fuel on Earth, but one whose unique atomic structure makes power generation from nuclear fusion potentially feasible--from the lunar surface. India's scramjet RLV, Kalam asserted, will provide the "low-cost, fully reusable space transportation" that has previously "denied mankind the benefit of space solar-power stations in geostationary and other orbits."

Talk of grand futuristic projects comes cheap, of course. Nevertheless, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) performed its first commercial launch in April, lofting an Italian gamma-ray observatory into orbit on its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. Next, in early 2008, the Chandraayan-1, India's first lunar orbiter, will carry two NASA projects to search the moon's surface for sites suitable for the proposed U.S. Moon Base. And at next year's end, the first flight of the Hypersonic Technology Demonstrator Vehicle (HTDV), a demo for the scramjet RLV, is scheduled.

While this current spate of activity brings the country greater prominence, India's space program is hardly a new development. In 1975, ISRO launched its first satellite, Aryabhata, on a Soviet rocket, and in 1980, India's first home-built launcher, the SLV-3, successfully put a satellite into orbit. ISRO has continued with a series of larger satellites and rockets in the succeeding years. Rather than national prestige, the Indian focus has until recently been on entirely pragmatic applications that gave the most bang for its limited rupees: communications satellites to provide services to far-flung regions of a vast country with little existing communications infrastructure, meteorology packages (often carried on the same geosynchronous satellites that perform communications missions), and remote-sensing satellites to map India's natural resources.

Now ISRO is moving beyond that focus on immediately practical space applications. In November 2006, Virender Kumar, counselor for space at India's Washington, DC, embassy, told a forum on U.S.-India space relations at the Center for Strategic and International studies, "The time has come when you do have the feeling that you have accomplished a lot." Following much discussion within India's space-science community, Kumar continued, "They basically demanded that we go forward and do these exploration missions."

Setting aside the more science-fictional objectives described by President Kalam--whose term just ended, on July 25--in the near future, the most technologically innovative of ISRO's projects is its scramjet RLV, named Avatar. Lowering launch costs via an RLV has, of course, been theunattainable holy grail for both the United States and Russian space programs. Avatar would weigh only 25 metric tons, with 60 percent of that the liquid hydrogen needed to fuel the turbo-ramjet engines that would power its initial aircraft-style takeoff from an airstrip and its ascent to a cruising altitude. Thereafter, Avatar's scramjet propulsion system would cut in to accelerate it from Mach 4 to Mach 8, while an onboard system would collect air from which liquid oxygen would be separated. That liquid oxygen would then be used in Avatar's final flight phase, as its rocket engine burned the collected liquid oxygen and the remaining hydrogen to enter a 100-kilometer-high orbit. ISRO claims that Avatar's design would enable it to achieve at least a hundred reentries into the atmosphere. Theoretically, given ISRO's plans for it to carry a payload weighing up to one metric ton, Avatar could thus deliver a 500-to-1,000-kilogram payload into orbit for about $67 per kilogram.

Current launch prices range from about $4,300 per kilogram via a Russian Proton launch to about $40,000 per kilogram via a Pegasus launch. Conceivably, Avatar could give India a radical advantage in the global launch market. Gregory Benford, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Irvine, and an advisor to NASA and the White House Council on Space Policy, is enthusiastic: "The Avatar RLV project will enable the Indian program to leap ahead of the Chinese nostalgia trip. Once low cost to orbit comes alive, it will drive cheaper methods of doing all our unmanned activities in space."

Still, Avatar's potentially radical advantage comes with significant restraints, given both the restricted scale of its payloads and that very low 100-kilometer orbit. That latter factor, indeed, is something of a puzzle since any satellite released at such a height will find its orbit degrading quickly. Do the Indians intend to use Avatar as a first-stage launcher, in effect, from which they will fire their satellites further up into secure orbits? Perhaps. But in that case, it's hard not to notice that Avatar, in fact, makes more sense as a missile-launch platform. After all, the United States is also working on the scramjet concept but in the context of an unmanned global cruise missile: the X-51 Scramjet-Waverider.

Could Avatar be just another military application upon which India's space scientists are piggybacking their hopes to develop a radical RLV prototype? The Indians do seem to be serious enough about Avatar as a commercial concept that they've taken out patents internationally on the design. ISRO has, relatively, a very low budget, and for Avatar to happen, Indians need to bring in international partners and funding. But if it turns out that Avatar is really just another military application that India's space scientists have used to secure funding from their military for their high aspirations, they will hardly be the first ones in the history of spaceflight to do so.

http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19115/

 

[Bushroda]

'ISRO is planning a Mars mission'
1 Aug 2007, 0521 hrs IST

The Indian space programme is unique in the world for its innovative use of space technology for development programmes. ISRO, which spearheads space research in India, is now planning a manned mission to moon and most probably, an unmanned mission to Mars. ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair spoke to Atul Sethi:

Q: What are the achievements of India’s space programme?

We have been successful in realising the vision of self-reliant capability. Today, India has established space systems like INSAT for communication, television broadcasting, meteorology and disaster warning and the Indian Remote Sensing Satellite (IRS) for resources monitoring and management.

INSAT is the largest domestic communication satellite system in the Asia-Pacific region and IRS is the largest constellation of remote sensing satellite providing data in a variety of spatial resolution and spectral bands.

India has developed two powerful launch vehicles; Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) to place its satellites in required orbits.

All these space systems have been developed in a self-reliant way in spite of several challenges such as the absence of the right industrial infrastructure to take on advanced systems realisation and the regime of technology denials.

Today, our space programme is recognised by the world for novel applications to which the space systems have been put to use, in areas like tele-education, telemedicine, village resource centres, forecasting poten-tial zones for fishing, and locating groundwater prospect zones.

Q: Space sciences is an area where, many feel, India has some expertise. What are our areas for research?

Our activities cover astronomy, astrophysics, planetary and earth science and theoretical physics. Ground facilities like mesosphere-stratosphere-troposphere radar and ground-based observatories, a series of sounding rockets and spacecraft platforms are available for pursuing scientific investigations.

With the existing capabilities, India has now planned the first mission to moon, Chandrayaan-1, that will carry six Indian scientific instruments besides six instruments from other space agencies (NASA-2, ESA-3, Bulgaria-1).

Q: Is ISRO looking at an unman-ned mission to Mars before the proposed manned moon mission?

An unmanned spacecraft could follow Chandrayaan-1 to Mars. Man-ned space mission will be pursued as another project, for which project report is now under preparation and if approved the mission could be undertaken in about 8-10 years.

Q: What would be ISRO’s thrust areas in the future?

We would continue to increase the capacity and capability of our present space systems. Reduction of cost of access to space is another area. GSLV Mk-III that is already under development is expected to reduce the cost of the present GSLV by about 30 per cent.

 

[Contrarian]

Indian will be put in space by 2015: ISRO Chairman

Nagpur, Aug. 4 (PTI): India will be able to send its astronaut into space by 2015 and embark on a lunar mission after 2020, noted space scientist and Chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Madhavan Nair, said Friday.

"India will be launching its satellite 'Chandrayan' by mid next year for carrying out scientific experiments on the moon," Nair told reporters after inaugurating an information and communication technology gallery at the Raman Science centre here.

The satellite with a payload of 560 kg will carry various instruments to study the surface of moon, Nair said adding, the satellite will be launched by PSLV sometime around August next year.

It will orbit near the moon and take visuals and photographs to study the real colour of the surface. It will remain for two years and this will be first of its kind experiment by ISRO as a part of India's lunar mission.

ISRO was in a position of launching commercial satellites of Italy and some European countries as it has acquired the necessary capability, he said.

Speaking on debris in space, Nair said a United Nations organisation was working on minimising it along with exploring ways to get rid of them.

He lauded the role of Maharashtra in using tele-medicine and tele-education technology seriously.
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200708040360.htm