Showing posts with label Spacescience. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spacescience. Show all posts

Thursday, March 13, 2025

Breaking New Ground: ISRO's SpaDex Satellites Undocked Successfully


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    In a historic milestone, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has successfully undocked its SpaDex (Space Docking Experiment) satellites on their very first attempt. This groundbreaking achievement demonstrates ISRO's growing proficiency in advanced space technologies and reinforces India's position as a formidable force in the global space community.

 

Overview of the SpaDex Mission:

The SpaDex mission was conceived to test and validate autonomous docking and undocking procedures in space—capabilities that are paramount for the future of space exploration, satellite servicing, and space station operations. This mission represents a significant leap towards enhancing the functionality and longevity of satellites, enabling more ambitious endeavors in outer space.

 

Key Objectives and Components of SpaDex

The primary objectives of the SpaDex mission were to:

1. Demonstrate Autonomous Docking: Achieving precise docking maneuvers without human intervention.

2. Validate Undocking Procedures: Ensuring safe and successful separation of docked spacecraft.

3. Test Advanced Navigation and Control Systems: Employing state-of-the-art technologies for guidance and control.

 

The SpaDex mission comprised two identical satellites equipped with advanced sensors, navigation systems, and docking mechanisms. These satellites were designed to operate collaboratively, executing a series of complex maneuvers to achieve docking and undocking.

Launch and Initial Operations:

The SpaDex satellites were launched into orbit aboard ISRO's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), a trusted workhorse known for its reliability and versatility. Following the successful deployment of the satellites in a predefined orbit, the initial operations commenced, setting the stage for the intricate docking and undocking procedures.

Autonomous Docking: A Technological Feat:

The autonomous docking of the SpaDex satellites was a testament to ISRO's prowess in developing cutting-edge space technologies. This phase involved several critical steps:

●       Proximity Operations: The satellites maneuvered into close proximity, using advanced sensors and algorithms to maintain precise relative positioning.

●       Approach and Capture: The docking mechanisms were activated, guiding the satellites towards a seamless and secure connection. This required flawless coordination and real-time data processing.

●       Secure Docking: Once docked, the satellites established robust communication links, enabling data exchange and synchronized operations.

 

The success of the autonomous docking phase demonstrated ISRO's ability to execute complex space operations with high precision and reliability.

The Undocking Operation: A Momentous Achievement:

The undocking operation was the highlight of the SpaDex mission, showcasing ISRO's mastery over space technology. This phase involved:

●       Preparation for Separation: The satellites were prepared for undocking, ensuring all systems were in optimal condition for the maneuver.

●       Controlled Separation: The undocking mechanisms were activated, and the satellites performed a controlled separation, maintaining stability and avoiding any collision risk.

●       Post-Undocking Operations: Following the successful undocking, the satellites resumed independent operations, continuing their respective missions.

 

The flawless execution of the undocking operation marked a significant milestone, proving ISRO's capability to develop and implement advanced space technologies.

 

Importance of the SpaDex Mission:

The success of the SpaDex mission is crucial for several reasons:

●       Technological Advancement: The mission has demonstrated India's capability to perform complex space operations, such as docking and undocking, which are essential for future missions.

●       Future Missions: The technologies developed and tested during the SpaDex mission will be instrumental in upcoming missions, including Chandrayaan-4, the Indian Space Station, and other ambitious projects.

●       International Standing: This achievement further cements India's position as a formidable player in the global space exploration arena.

 

Looking Ahead:

ISRO's chairman, V Narayanan, emphasized the importance of this achievement for future missions. He highlighted that the satellites, which were previously controlled independently, now function as a single unit. The next phase involves establishing power transfer between the modules, a crucial step for future missions where multiple docking operations will be required.

The SpaDex mission is not a one-time operation. ISRO plans to conduct multiple docking attempts to demonstrate its capability to perform the procedure reliably and repeatedly. The space agency has meticulously planned and carried out various tests replicating on-orbit conditions to ensure the success of the undocking operation.

Conclusion:

ISRO's successful undocking of the SpaDex satellites sets the stage for more advanced space missions and solidifies India's position as a leader in space exploration. This groundbreaking achievement demonstrates ISRO's commitment to pushing the boundaries of what is possible and paves the way for future endeavors in space.



-Team Yuva Aaveg
Praveen Kumar Maurya 

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Thursday, April 11, 2024

Story of Sergei K. Krikalev

 


Sergei Konstantinovich Krikalev was born on August 27, 1958, in Leningrad, USSR (now St. Petersburg, Russia).

He graduated from high school in 1975, pursued mechanical engineering at the Leningrad Mechanical Institute, and received his degree in 1981, now at St. Petersburg Technical University (now called Baltic State Technical University).

After graduating from the university, he joined NPO Energia, the Soviet industrial organization responsible for manned space flight activities.


He enjoyed swimming, skiing, cycling, aerobatic flying, and amateur radio operations, particularly from space (callsign U5MIR).

He joined NPO Energia, the Russian industrial organization responsible for crewed space flight activities. He tested space flight equipment, developed space operations methods, and participated in ground control operations.

His mother wanted him to become a doctor, but Sergei was small, determined, and interested in pursuing his dream of cosmonaut.

When the Salyut 7 space station failed in 1985, he worked on the rescue mission team, developing procedures for docking with the uncontrolled station and repairing the station’s onboard system.

Krikalev was selected as a cosmonaut in 1985. He completed his basic training and was assigned to the Buran program, the USSR’s space shuttle, in 1886, but it was canceled in 1993.

He started training for the first long-duration flight aboard the Mir space station. Soyuz TM-7 was launched on November 26, 1988, with Krikalev as Flight Engineer, Alexander Volkov as Commander, and French astronaut Jean-Loup Chretien.

Krikalev returned safely to earth on 27 April 1989 after spending the next 152 days aboard Mir.

In April 1990, Krikalev started preparing for his second flight as a backup crew member for the eighth long-duration Mir mission, which also included five EVAs and a week of Soviet-Japanese operations.

Krikalev began training for the ninth Mir mission, which included training for ten EVAs in December 1990

Krikalev was selected as flight engineer, Commander Anatoly Artsebarsky, and British astronaut Helen Sharman by Soyuz TM- 12, launched on May 19 May 1991.

Krikalev is sometimes called “the last Soviet citizen.”

Krikalev was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, the Order of Lenin, the French title of L’Officier de la Légion d’Honneur, and the new title of Hero of Russia for his space flight experience

He also received the NASA Space Flight Medal in 1994 and another in 1998.

Asteroid 7469 Krikalev is named in his honor.

Krikalev regularly communicated with various amateur radio operators (hams) across the globe throughout his various missions aboard Mir. Krikalev and amateur radio operator Margaret Iaquinto formed a particularly lengthy relationship.

Krikalev and Iaquinto communicated successfully about personal matters and political affairs via packet radio for the first time in history between an orbiting space station and an amateur radio operator.

Krikalev was in space when the Soviet Union was dissolved on 26 December 1991. The Baikonur Cosmodrome and the landing area were located in the newly independent Kazakhstan, and there was a great deal of unreliability about the destiny of his mission. He remained in space, spending 311 days more than twice as long as initially planned.  Because Krikalev spent so much time in space, it caused him to be 0.02 times younger than other people born simultaneously due to traveling at high velocities and slowing down the clock. He returned to Earth on 25 March and is sometimes called scrutinized the "last Soviet citizen." These events are documented and examined in Romanian filmmaker Andrei Ujică's 1995 documentary Out of the Present. Krikalev's story also inspired the 2017 film Sergio & Sergei, directed by Ernesto Daranas.

He was awarded four NASA medals, the Order of the Rising Sun, 3rd degree (Japan) and he is an officer of the Legion of Honor (France). 
 
Mr. Krikalev is a Member of the National aerobatic team and a World Champion and a European champion on glider aerobatic.

According to the media news, In 1991, veteran cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev undertook a routine mission to the Mir space station, unaware that he was on the edge  of viewing historic events unfold from the extraordinary vantage point of space but Krikalev's mission coincided with the Soviet Union's dramatic collapse.

As per the news outlet, this disturbance and turbulence  consequenced on a delayed return for Krikalev.

The extension of returning of Karikalev create lots of  challenges. Microgravity took a toll on Krikalev's physical health, leading to muscle and bone weakening. Social isolation and disrupted communication from a changing Earth added to the psychological strain.

Krikalev returned to a completely different world after 10 months and 5,000 Earth orbits. The Soviet Union was gone and replaced by newly independent states.

Sergei Krikalev's space mission wasn't just about scientific research. He became a global symbol of human connection during a time of political chaos.

According to BBC-quoted space historian Kathleen Lewis, Krikalev's down-to-earth conversations with people on Earth via the space station's radio fostered a special connection. Lewis said these radio chats created a network of informal contacts around the world, making Krikalev a popular figure despite the extraordinary circumstances of his extended mission.


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Thursday, March 21, 2024

Voyager’s 15 billion-mile software update has been successful!

 

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Wrong assumption that make alien existence-

source- parimal space

So friends, as science and space lovers know, NASA launched a spacecraft in 1977 whose name was Voyager 1, and perhaps you know that this spacecraft also had a golden disk in which there was information about the Earth and our human evolutions.
 There were also sounds of humans and animals, but do you know that NASA has recently installed a software update in Voyager 1, which is 163 AU (24.4 billion km; 15.2 billion mi) so far from the Earth? But the question is: how did NASA do this with such pinpoint accuracy without any problems? So, friends, this is what we will know about today's topic. You will also know how NASA people did this without any problem. One interesting thing is that this spacecraft runs on 70's technology and has only 69 KB of memory storage. After all, NASA people managed to do this in such a capacity. How did they do this? And friends, as you know, this space is so useful that in today's time even a photo is stored in the MB's. Also, you would not know that the mission of Voyager 1 ended in the 1980's when he took photographs of Jupiter, Saturn, and Saturn's moon, Titan, and sent them. Now the mission was over, and the scientists who were involved in that mission were also 70 or 80 years old. Do you know that those team members were called old people? Even after being launched, there was no permission to have a retire; they could only have one if Voyager 1 or 2. Retire; after all, what is there in this mission that NASA is keeping its team members under wraps? Is Voyager sending any such information from space to NASA people, which is a top secret for NASA? Well, let us know about it clearly. It will happen when we know what happened to Voyager 1. 45 years after its launch, NASA wants to update it. In fact, on August 25, 2012, after completely studying Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 1 exited the solar system. And by stepping into interstellar space, he started a new journey—that is, he started a journey outside the solar system. In this journey, the spacecraft was sending new data to NASA, but after a few years in 2022, suddenly on NASA's computers, zeros and ones from Voyager appeared. Now NASA people will be happy after seeing these signals because they were thinking that the golden record disc that they have sent has gotten into the hands of some alien civilization, and they want to decode that data and make contact with us, but a complete After a year, this signal After decoding, they came to know that it was nothing, as they thought, and that something else was involved in these strange signals. See the explanation later.
source- parimal space


Voyager 1 spacecraft working
 
source- parimal space

NASA's probe has a total of three onboard computers. The first is FDS (Flight Data System.), which collects and stores data from all the science instruments installed in the Voyager; the second is AACS (Attitude and Articulation Control System), which controls the alignment and position of the Voyager; and the third is its main system, CCS (Computer Command System), which controls the above two systems as well as the voyager’s whole system.
So when Voyager travels in space, these trios (individually) collect information and then convert it into binary codes, e.g., 010101010, etc., and when this data is completely collected, it is sent through a data transmission device called the TMU (Telemetry Modulation Unit), through which it is sent to Earth. After which, the old scientists of the Voyager project sitting on Earth together decoded it. But recently, the three systems of Voyager have had two major problems. The AACS (Attitude and Articulation Control System), which controls the alignment and position of Voyager, got damaged. As a result, it was not able to communicate properly with the TMU (Telemetry Modulation Unit). Because of this incorrect communication, NASA’s system continuously started getting random signals of zeros and ones. And the second problem was that Voyager’s communications antennas were slowly getting thrusters that pointed towards the Earth, which was slowly damaging. Actually, in Voyager, fuel is ignited from pipes and goes to thrusters. But the problem is that after every firing of thrusters, the fuel that doesn’t burn starts to accumulate in those pipes. And now, as we all know, it launched in 1977; since then, almost 40 years, the thrusters have been continuously firing, so from that point on, they were almost at a point of failure. And if these thrusters were stopped, NASA wouldn't be able to point the Voyager’s antennas towards Earth.


source- parimal space
How NASA deals with this big problem.

DEEP SPACE NETWORK In this network, there were three 70-meter-long antennas located in the United States, Spain, and Australia. And if you place trace three in the center of the earth, you will see the location of these trios at a 120-degree angle from each other. Through this, NASA can communicate with its spacecraft every second despite the rotation of Earth, and that’s why the Deep Space Network was NASA’s ideal choice to send Voyager software updates while sitting on Earth.
Now the next question is how we install this update in such small storage because, as I explained earlier, this spacecraft has such a small capacity that we can’t even upload high-quality images to it. So after thinking about it, NASA came up with a solution that was as simple as it was difficult to listen to. They had to write a code that would solve the problems of both computers and thrusters in a small space. And surprisingly, such a code was written, and the idea of making such a code came from seeing a computer’s keyboard. Actually, just like repeated tasks on the PC,like shortcut keys for cut and paste, they also wrote repeated tasks of voyagers in their code, such as thrusters firing, taking pictures, sending back data, and pointing position towards Earth. They wrote shortcuts for these. And then, these shortcuts were written in the language of the systems on Voyager1, which is designed to understand, that is, in the assembly language. They made the small code. Basically, the assembly language is a hardware-type-based language that directly controls the hardware on Voyager 1, whereas all the languages today are software-based languages. And this is the reason why NASA still wants to keep its employees under control: if they hire other researchers instead of them, then the new researchers will know about the software language, not the hardware, so they have to start from zero. Before writing the code, they will also have to understand which Voyager hardware is in that Voyager, how many components are there on it, and how it is connected to whom, and that’s why NASA made the code from its old researchers.

Now, when the code was ready, it was time to send it on Voyager 1, but before this, they had one final question in front of them, which was whether the short code they wrote was actually working or not. Well, to verify this, NASA came up with an idea that would kill two birds with one stone. Before sending the software update in Voyager 1, they send this software update in Voyager 2.

The Voyager 2 had two advantages.

1. Voyager 2 is able to communicate properly with NASA, and it is closer to us than Voyager 1. And so if we had updated it before, we would have gotten the results comparatively faster.

2. If the update was done correctly, then Voyager 2 would have been able to avoid the problems that happened to Voyager 1 in the future.

Keeping this in mind, on October 28, 2023, NASA sent a message to Voyager 1 that they had successfully installed the update on Voyager 2 through the Deep Space Network, and after it had been successfully installed and run, NASA sent the same update signal to Voyager 1 from the same deep space network, and finally, after a journey of about 22 hours, that update signal reached Voyager 1.
source- parimal space
AACS (Attitude and Articulation Control System) is stored in its plated wire memory. Basically, what happens is that the wires and metal plates align with each other in such a way that at the point where these plates and wires intersect, a bit, e.g., 0 or 1, is stored at that point. Now, as the current passes through these wires, a magnetic field is generated there. If the current goes from right to left in the plate, then the magnetic field rotates clockwise and 0 is stored there, and if the direction of the current is opposite, then 1 will be stored through this. As a result, the direction of the magnetic field was also changed, the bit was flipped, and a new update was installed in it. As soon as it was installed, the shortcut keys written in it put the tasks of thrusters firing, taking pictures, and sending back data into automation, and thrusters started firing in the same direction. This is how we installed a big update on Voyager 1 while sitting on Earth.

source- parimal space


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