Lil Mathew
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The Indian space agency's Mars Mission, launching on November 5, is the cheapest by any nation to the red planet! And there are attributes unique to ISRO that enable it to practise frugal engineering at the cutting edge time and again.
When the mission blasts off, it'll carry a Rs 450-crore price tag way below what Nasa, the European Space Agency, Japan and China spent on their journey to Mars.
To understand the spirit of India's Mars mission, it is useful to look first at the country's moon mission in 2008.
The Chandrayaan-I project, as it is known, was announced in 2003. ISRO had partners, the Europeans and Americans, who had their own experiments to fly in Chandrayaan. Some of them were puzzled by ISRO's style of working. They were just 18 months away from the launch date, and ISRO was only beginning to cut metal.
The spacecraft flew as planned in November 2008, operated for 312 days, and achieved most of its objectives. ISRO's partners, pleased that their instruments were working fine, tacitly acknowledged the value of the organisation's minimalist approach.
It was a tested method in ISRO, perfected over decades, and it is now being used to maximum effect in Mangalyaan: save time, money and human efforts through careful planning.
You could call it frugal engineering applied to space. Mangalyaan was formally approved only in August 2012, and ISRO had started work on the structure three months before the formal approval. The satellite was finished this August.
NASA's MAVEN, a Mars mission nearly identical to Mangalyaan and to be flown on November 18, had taken at least five years of work and $679 million in costs. If the Mangalyaan launch is successful, ISRO would have done it in 18 months, with $69 million.
When ISRO was set up in the 1960s, moon and Mars missions were not on the agenda, even in the faraway future. "We do not have the fantasy of competing with the economically advanced nations in the exploration of the moon or the planets or manned space-flight," its founder Vikram Sarabhai had famously said. Space technology was purely for the benefit of the society.
With such clear objectives, and working in a period when India was very poor, ISRO's leaders developed a style that produced maximum benefits with the minimum of effort.
So, for two decades, ISRO created some of the best examples of frugal engineering in India.
In the 21st century, when the world tries hard for low-cost access to space, other nations are looking at ISRO with interest and trying to use some of the principles it had perfected. ISRO is also becoming an important collaborator for NASA and Europe.
ISRO's engineering now revolves around a few core principles: adapt technology as much as possible, minimise the number of physical models, optimise on testing, and work round the clock.
Adaptation is an old method that has now been perfected to an art in ISRO. As in many Indian products, ISRO uses technology in unusual ways not always directly evident to developed country engineers.
In 1981, when India launched its first major satellite called APPLE, it used a motor from its untested rocket called Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV). This rocket had only one launch—that too failed—before APPLE went up on an Ariane rocket, but the adaptation was successful.
In space engineering, where conditions are tough and costs of failure high, it is not easy to adapt technology. It also involves more risk, but ISRO is willing to take—and manage— that risk.
For Mangalyaan, the major adaptation was on using the PSLV rocket. ISRO had been making changes to this rocket for two decades. In recent times, it has miniaturised the avionics, and built its own chip and onboard computer.
The capability of the PSLV has changed over the years, now resulting in three classes of rockets. And yet, using it for a trip to Mars was quite an adaptation and involved risk.
The second innovation in Mangalyaan, also involving risk, was to make only one physical model of the spacecraft. ISRO had done it in Chandrayaan and then brought this experience to Mangalyaan.
NASA and the European Space Agency usually make three physical models iteratively. ISRO did everything in software and then made the final model that flew. It is not that others did not use software, but ISRO made a decision to put it to full use.
Other factors helped too. Testing was optimised as much as possible, and this saved costs and speeded up the development process.
ISRO engineers worked round the clock, often in shifts, when the satellite was being made.
ISRO made aggressive schedules that were nearly always sacrosanct. These principles - technology adaptation and aggressive scheduling — reduced the freedom of its engineers to try completely new things.
"We do not allow someone to build a completely new rocket," says ISRO chairman K Radhakrishnan. It is the price ISRO has paid for increased speed and efficiency. Reducing cost and speeding up work are now key goals of all space organisations. NASA achieves this through competition.
Instead of one large organisation driving programmes centrally, it creates parallel teams that compete against each other for key projects. This change was made in the 1990s and made NASA more efficient.
However, NASA is a conservative organisation that often builds completely new technologies, and so it may not take the course that ISRO has.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com...s-mission-the-cheapest/slideshow/24982329.cms
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com...s-mission-the-cheapest/slideshow/24982329.cms
When the mission blasts off, it'll carry a Rs 450-crore price tag way below what Nasa, the European Space Agency, Japan and China spent on their journey to Mars.
To understand the spirit of India's Mars mission, it is useful to look first at the country's moon mission in 2008.
The Chandrayaan-I project, as it is known, was announced in 2003. ISRO had partners, the Europeans and Americans, who had their own experiments to fly in Chandrayaan. Some of them were puzzled by ISRO's style of working. They were just 18 months away from the launch date, and ISRO was only beginning to cut metal.
The spacecraft flew as planned in November 2008, operated for 312 days, and achieved most of its objectives. ISRO's partners, pleased that their instruments were working fine, tacitly acknowledged the value of the organisation's minimalist approach.
It was a tested method in ISRO, perfected over decades, and it is now being used to maximum effect in Mangalyaan: save time, money and human efforts through careful planning.
You could call it frugal engineering applied to space. Mangalyaan was formally approved only in August 2012, and ISRO had started work on the structure three months before the formal approval. The satellite was finished this August.
NASA's MAVEN, a Mars mission nearly identical to Mangalyaan and to be flown on November 18, had taken at least five years of work and $679 million in costs. If the Mangalyaan launch is successful, ISRO would have done it in 18 months, with $69 million.
When ISRO was set up in the 1960s, moon and Mars missions were not on the agenda, even in the faraway future. "We do not have the fantasy of competing with the economically advanced nations in the exploration of the moon or the planets or manned space-flight," its founder Vikram Sarabhai had famously said. Space technology was purely for the benefit of the society.
With such clear objectives, and working in a period when India was very poor, ISRO's leaders developed a style that produced maximum benefits with the minimum of effort.
So, for two decades, ISRO created some of the best examples of frugal engineering in India.
In the 21st century, when the world tries hard for low-cost access to space, other nations are looking at ISRO with interest and trying to use some of the principles it had perfected. ISRO is also becoming an important collaborator for NASA and Europe.
ISRO's engineering now revolves around a few core principles: adapt technology as much as possible, minimise the number of physical models, optimise on testing, and work round the clock.
Adaptation is an old method that has now been perfected to an art in ISRO. As in many Indian products, ISRO uses technology in unusual ways not always directly evident to developed country engineers.
In 1981, when India launched its first major satellite called APPLE, it used a motor from its untested rocket called Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV). This rocket had only one launch—that too failed—before APPLE went up on an Ariane rocket, but the adaptation was successful.
In space engineering, where conditions are tough and costs of failure high, it is not easy to adapt technology. It also involves more risk, but ISRO is willing to take—and manage— that risk.
For Mangalyaan, the major adaptation was on using the PSLV rocket. ISRO had been making changes to this rocket for two decades. In recent times, it has miniaturised the avionics, and built its own chip and onboard computer.
The capability of the PSLV has changed over the years, now resulting in three classes of rockets. And yet, using it for a trip to Mars was quite an adaptation and involved risk.
The second innovation in Mangalyaan, also involving risk, was to make only one physical model of the spacecraft. ISRO had done it in Chandrayaan and then brought this experience to Mangalyaan.
NASA and the European Space Agency usually make three physical models iteratively. ISRO did everything in software and then made the final model that flew. It is not that others did not use software, but ISRO made a decision to put it to full use.
Other factors helped too. Testing was optimised as much as possible, and this saved costs and speeded up the development process.
ISRO engineers worked round the clock, often in shifts, when the satellite was being made.
ISRO made aggressive schedules that were nearly always sacrosanct. These principles - technology adaptation and aggressive scheduling — reduced the freedom of its engineers to try completely new things.
"We do not allow someone to build a completely new rocket," says ISRO chairman K Radhakrishnan. It is the price ISRO has paid for increased speed and efficiency. Reducing cost and speeding up work are now key goals of all space organisations. NASA achieves this through competition.
Instead of one large organisation driving programmes centrally, it creates parallel teams that compete against each other for key projects. This change was made in the 1990s and made NASA more efficient.
However, NASA is a conservative organisation that often builds completely new technologies, and so it may not take the course that ISRO has.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com...s-mission-the-cheapest/slideshow/24982329.cms
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com...s-mission-the-cheapest/slideshow/24982329.cms
