ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY - DigiTech World Current/Future developments in Aviation - GNA University
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Vol. 2, # 3, Aug. 2017
DigiTech World
Current/Future developments in
Aviation
FACULTY of
ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY
GNA University
Phagwara
Faculty of Engineering & Technology
Table of Contents
S.No. Content Page No.
1 Editorial-Chief Editor’s Desk 1-2
2 Editorial 2-Issue Editor’s Premise 3-4
3 Glimpses of +2 students from Eklavya School 5-6
Jalandhar
4 Survey Camp of B.Tech Civil Students 7
5 Electric Flight 8-9
6 Solar Airplane 10-11
7 Drones 12-13
8 Navigational Beacon 14-15
9 Autonomous “soaring with solar concept” 16-17
10 ISRO’s most powerful Rocket GSLV Mk-III 18-19
Faculty of Engineering & Technology
Editorial - Chief Editor’s Desk
Dear Readers,
The domestic aviation sector is projected to employ nearly four million people in
two decades, driven by improved economic activities and labour productivity, says a
study instituted by the Civil Aviation Ministry. Economist indicates that by 2035,
the Indian civil aviation sector (across the study segments of airport, airlines, cargo,
MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul) and ground handling) will employ 0.8 to
1 million personnel directly and another 3 million indirectly (for 1 direct job about
3.5 indirect jobs are created) . The projection has been made after taking into ac-
count the likely improvements in economic output and labour productivity.
This newsletter is specifically related to the current and latest developments in the
aviation field. For Ex: MIG-21 has been the pride of Indian Air force and has been
there since decades. MIG-219 bis are likely to serve IAF until 2019.
The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 is a supersonic jetfighter and interceptor aircraft,
designed by the Mikoyan-Gurevich Design Bureau in the Soviet Union. Approxi-
mately 60 countries over four continents have flown the MiG-21, and it still serves
many nations six decades after its maiden flight. It made aviation records be-
came the most-produced supersonic jet aircraft in aviation history. Today, around
242 MiG-21s are in service in Indian Air Force. Engines which are used in MIG-21
are designed by Sergei Konstanti-
novich Tumansky. Tumansky was a
specialist in the field of mechanics
and machine building. He has de-
signed R-series of engines like R-
11, R-13, R-15, R-25 etc.
GNA University is privileged to
have one of Tumansky Engines R-
25 in Aerospace Lab. The Tuman-
sky R-25 was designed as a re-
placement for Tumansky R-
13 in MiG-21 fighters. R-25 is a
two-spool axial-flow turbojet fea-
turing a new compressor with in-
creased overall pressure ratio and
airflow, variable two-stage after-
burner, and greater use of titanium.
Page-1
Faculty of Engineering & Technology
The R-25 jet engine's specialty was the addition of a second fuel pump in the afterburning
stage. Activating the booster feature allows the engine to develop 96.8 kilonewtons
(21,800 lbf) of thrust under 4,000 metres (13,000 ft) of altitude. The limit of operation is 1
minute for dogfight practice and 3 minutes for an actual wartime emergency, as further use
causes the engine to overheat and potentially explode. The R-25 engine was used on
the MiG-21bis and the Sukhoi Su-15bis. A total of 3,200 R-25 were built between 1971
and 1975. The engine was also built under license by HAL in India for its fleet of MiG-21.
Students at GNA are given hands on experience in dealing with different modules of Tu-
mansky engine starting from inlet section to afterburner section which aids students in un-
derstanding and implementing mechanics involved in any jet engine.
Apart from R25 Engine, students are also given training in GNA’s own Aviation wing. In
Aviation wing, there is India’s first Maule M-7 aircraft also known as “super –rocket”.
Detailed knowledge of material, parts and use of hand tools, simple machine tools and pre-
cision measuring instruments, aircraft systems, aircraft instruments and equipment, mainte-
nance schedules is imparted to students which enhances further skills of Aeronautical stu-
dents.
It has been a privilege to bring to you the developments in aviation field in this newsletter
as well as the progress that GNA has or is making in the Aerospace department.
Dr. Vikrant Sharma
Professor and Associate Dean
Faculty of Engineering and Technology,
GNA University
Page-2
Faculty of Engineering & Technology
Editorial 2 - Issue Editor’s Premise
“World’s Largest Plane to Carry Satellites into Space”
Dear Readers, Paul Allen
The World has a new largest plane, and it looks like nothing you've ever seen at the
airport. But this funky behemoth isn't for carrying passengers. It's for hoisting satel-
lites into outer space. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has spent the last six years
working on a giant aircraft capable of launching rockets to space. In the month of
June 2017, his company Stratolaunch Systems literally rolled that plane out of its
hangar in the Mojave Desert for the first time ever.
It’s called the Stratolaunch aircraft, and it’s massive. The plane has a 385-foot wing-
span, which makes it the largest in the world by that metric. It weighs about 500,000
pounds dry, but that can swell to a maximum takeoff weight of 1.3 million pounds.
Stratolaunch moves all that weight across the ground on 28 wheels, and eventually
will carry its cargo through the air thanks to six 747 aircraft engines. The wingspan
makes it the largest plane in the world, finally surpassing Howard Hughes' "Spruce
Goose", the enormous wooden plane built by the famous entrepreneur that made its
first flight in 1947.
Page-3
Faculty of Engineering & Technology
Stratolaunch may be the big-
gest, but it’s far from the first
to consider ‘air launch to or-
bit’ to supplement rockets.
Traditional rockets expend an
enormous amount of energy
flying straight up through the
dense, lower bits of the at-
mosphere That’s why they’re
built in disposable stages,
which jettison when they're
out of fuel. A plane whose
long wings generate lift from
that thick air can easily reach
tens of thousands of feet of
altitude. But the payload plane
-based launch systems can
carry has traditionally been
much smaller. Enter the heavy
-lifter Stratolaunch plane.
Launching from a runway ra-
ther than a pad means more flexibility, as well as lower cost. Rocket launches have tight
windows of time, because orbital engineers have to wait for the Earth to rotate to the right
point to reach a desired position in space. A giant plane is only limited by the availability of
giant runways, and can take off whenever it likes.
Allen founded the company in 2011 as part of a plan to make travel to low Earth orbit more
accessible. "Opening up access to (low Earth orbit) will deliver many benefits,"Allen wrote
on LinkedIn last year. "For example, we could deploy more satellites that would enable
better understanding of why our weather patterns are changing and help increase agricul-
tural productivity.
But first, the world’s new largest plane actually has to get off the ground. Stratolaunch is
performing fueling tests now, filling each of the six tanks separately to check for leaks.
Next will come engine runs, taxi tests on the ground, and then ultimately a brave flight
crew will take to the skies for the first time. Initially, flights will be under an experimental
certification from the FAA. Stratolaunch says safety is a priority so it’ll take things as
slowly as necessary, but it believes a first launch demonstration should be possible in 2019.
If all that goes well, Stratolaunch could perform its first demonstration flight in 2019 and
the world will officially have their largest airplane that will fling satellites into space.
Mr. Prabhjeet Singh
Assistant Professor (Aerospace Engineering)
Faculty of Engineering and Technology,
GNA University
Page-4
Faculty of Engineering & Technology
“Glimpses of +2 students from Eklavya School
Jalandhar”
Students from Eklavya School visited GNA Univeristy. GNA assisted
students in completion of their projects. Below is the list of projects under-
taken by students.
1. Touch Alarm
2. Sound Detector
3. Half Wave Rectifier
4. Tesla Coil
5. Day Night Auto Lamp
6. Burglar Alarm
7. Doorbell Alarm
8. Flashlight
Page-5
Faculty of Engineering & Technology
Apart from the projects, students also visited GNA workshops, Electrical lab,
Aerospace lab where they were given introduction of the machines. They were
delighted to see GNA Tumansky R-25 Jet engine which shifted their interest in
Aerospace Engineering. They are eager to visit GNA campus again. GNA be-
lieves in focusing more in practical knowledge rather than theoretical.
GNA provides ample
opportunities to the
students to gather
useful information
and also to have a di-
rect conversation with
the production man-
agers, technical su-
pervisors, and plant
supervisors which
lead our students to
learn different indus-
trial activity.
Page-6
Faculty of Engineering & Technology
“Survey camp of B.Tech Civil Students”
Survey camp was conducted for B.Tech 4th semester and Diploma 4th se-
mester at Manali from 10th of june to 10 of july, 15 days each for diploma
and degree courses. Manali is a highly region and is utilised to give expo-
sure to students for performing surveying in highly slopping grounds.
Bench mark was taken from Gts mark on a milestone embedded on road
side and was taken up to the survey location. The height attained by the
levelling process was 20 meter with in a span of 772 meters. Students per-
formed rigours levelling to achieve the desired level which was taken up
from 2009m to 2029m. Auto level was utilised for students for the above
said purpose.
At the location the traversing was first performed by the transit theodolite.
To give them a high tech exposure to technology their traverse was cross
checked with digital theodolite. Contouring was performed for each and
every square meter area under the traverse, which leads to concrete level-
ling detail performance over the ground. All the details was performed
with so precision that only negligible errors were found when all the de-
tails were checked by digital theodolite again.
As a stress relieving day, students were allowed to visit Jogni fall and
Hadima Temple so that they can appreciate the nature and value the gifts
of the environments to the mankind.
Students perform various social service events during the evening time as
a part of award of degree and completed 28 hours of social service which
Page-7
Faculty of Engineering & Technology
“Electric Flight”
Electric cars are commonly used nowadays. Every major car company in the world
is researching battery-powered vehicles, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, and a variety of
fuel-battery hybrids—if they haven't already brought one to market.
Things are going to be more difficult with aircraft. The challenges of electric flight
are multifold, stemming from the fact that modern batteries can't put out enough
juice to compensate for their weight. NASA's newest experimental plane, however,
is designed to crack the code of battery-powered aviation. Unlike an electric car, an
electric plane will need fundamental changes to not only the propulsion system, but
also the aerodynamic design of the aircraft itself. NASA's solution? An X-plane with
14 electric motors—12 of which will make up a "distributed electric propulsion sys-
tem" on a thin composite wing. Say hello to the X-57 Maxwell.
When it comes to air-
plane wings, bigger
means more lift, but it
also means more drag.
It's the great catch-22 of
aircraft design: Make a
wing big to produce
enough lift to take off on
a standard runway, and
you inevitably increase
drag and efficiency suf-
fers in cruise.
Page-8Faculty of Engineering & Technology
Make the wing smaller so you get more efficient flight at high speeds, and you have to take
off at high speeds to achieve enough lift to get into the air, requiring a longer runway. A thin
wing also means you need to land at high speeds, which can be dangerous.
Upon landing, the dozen high-lift motors fire up again to provide the necessary lift to ap-
proach the runway at a slower speed than cruise. The 12 little motors are not intended to
propel the craft forward at all, says Borer, but rather "are there only to provide lift during
takeoff and landing."
Electric flight has been studied over a century, but even today the only electric aircraft you
see are experimental demonstrators. The wing-size conundrum is only the beginning of a
long list of compromises. More power and more range require more batteries, for example,
but lifting a plane full of lithium-ion batteries into the air isn't the same as bolting a battery
to the undercarriage of a car. "Batteries are a huge portion of our weight right now,"
Tesla's Model S can hit up to 779 bhp, 920 ft-lb of torque, and a range over 250 miles—
partly because the electric automaker can mount the enormous battery under the car and get
away with the extra weight. The heavy battery on a Tesla lowers the car's center of gravity,
providing more traction, and lighter materials can be used elsewhere in the chassis to make
up the difference. On an airplane, you can't just bog down the craft with heavy batteries and
strip down the frame to compensate. The X-57 is a bird that requires a little more get-up-
and-go.
Instead of having all the high-lift motors run at the same speed, as they will on Mod IV, a
future iteration could include a computer control
system to automatically vary the speed of the
small motors. Running at the same speed, the lift
distribution across the wing isn't exactly uniform,
explains Borer, but that could possibly be correct-
ed by running the inner motors faster and the out-
er motors slower. In rough weather, the lift-
motors could automatically fire up on one side of
the airplane to stabilize the craft. And if a main
engine should blow out, the lift motors could be
used to compensate in an emergency landing situ-
ation. All of this is much too complicated for a pilot to deal with—no one can operate 12
throttles with such adroit finesse—but a flight control algorithm might be able to solve that
problem.
Will future airliners run on batteries with a dozen engines distributed across a thin wing? It's
anyone's guess. The X-57 Maxwell, however, will put the technology to the test for the first
time over the dry lakebed at Edwards, where the future of electric flight could take form.
Ms. Komal Sharma
Assistant Professor
(Electronics and Communications Engineering)
Faculty of Engineering and Technology,
GNA University
Page-9Faculty of Engineering & Technology
“Solar Airplane”
Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg set out and accomplished something
that still seems impossible today: the First Round-The-World Solar Flight,
powered only by the sun, with no fuel or polluting emissions.
In line with the Piccard Family tradition of scientific exploration and protec-
tion of the environment, Solar Impulse wanted to demonstrate that clean tech-
nologies can achieve impossible goals.
The record breaking solo flight of 5 days and 5 nights without fuel from Na-
goya to Hawaii gives a clear message : everybody could use the plane’s tech-
nologies on the ground to halve our world’s energy consumption, save natural
resources and improve our quality of life. This message will continue to be
spread by the pilots to the general public, students, key decision-makers and
entrepreneurs all over the world.
The adventure began with Bertrand Piccard’s vision that clean technologies
and energy efficiency can reduce our emissions and improve our quality of
life. It led up to the attempt of the First Round-The-World Solar Flights, with
in July 2015 André Borschberg’s 5-day 5-night record-breaking flight from
Japan to Hawaii, using only the power of the sun. Not sci-fi, but eccentric
enough to appeal to the people’s emotions and get their adrenalin pumping. It
would have made a great Jules Verne story a few decades back.
A Jules Verne dream of today means the urge to explore the unknown and the
force to do good, which must continue to inspire human beings. Take your
time, be patient and determined, wrote my great grandfather Jules Verne, for
everything great that has ever been achieved in the world, is the result of ex-
aggerated ambitions. And it is this spirit that Bertrand Piccard symbolizes best
in this project, which is ambitious but of universal benefit to mankind.
Page-10Faculty of Engineering & Technology
Technologies exist which can sim-
ultaneously protect the environ-
ment in a cost-effective manner
and bring profits to companies.
The problem with our society is
that, despite all the grand talk
about sustainable development,
we are a long way from making
use of the clean technologies that
are already available to us.
Every hour, our world consumes around a million tons of petrol, not to mention
other fossil fuels, spits back out into the atmosphere enough polluting emissions
to disrupt the climate, and leaves half of the population stagnating in totally un-
acceptable living conditions. And yet, everything could already be so different.
Until now, renewable energies, often monopolized by fringe political parties,
have lacked really dynamic promotional and marketing impetus. The ecologists
will only be able to make their voices heard if they speak the same language as
those whom they wish to convince. It is now urgent to leave behind the division
that has led nowhere for 40 years, in order to finally unite ecology with the econ-
omy, environment with finance, and an overall vision with short-term political
interest.
Mr. Mandip Singh
Assistant Professor (Electrical Engineering)
Faculty of Engineering and Technology,
GNA University
Page-11Faculty of Engineering & Technology
“Drones”
When I say the world
“transportation” What is
the first thing comes into
your mind? The Answer is
BUS, Train, Car, Airplane
etc. But if I say u can go to
office or can go for shop-
ping by flying. Isn’t it
Strange? Yes, the technol-
ogy makes the things pos-
sible. Whatever were the
predictions, they are all in
front of us. Over the next
decade, the idea of getting
the work on time, heading
out to the hinterlands for your family vacation or even going to the game will become
much easier. You don’t have to stuck into traffic jam etc. you can go by flying through
Drones.
A drone, in a technological context, is an unmanned aircraft system. Essentially, a drone
is a flying robot. The aircraft may be remotely controlled or can fly. Autonomously
through software-controlled flight plans in their embedded systems working in conjunc-
tion with on board sensors and GPS. Earlier, Drones were associated with the military.
Where they were used for different purposes such as Anti-aircraft target practice, Intelli-
gence gathering, as weapon platforms, civilian roles ranging from search and rescue, sur-
veillance, traffic monitoring, weather monitoring and fire fighting etc. Now personal
Drones and Business drones based on photography as well as video grapy, agriculture
and even used in delivery services. In late 2013, Amazon was the first organization to an-
nounce plan to use commercial drones for delivery activities.
Imagine if you could avoid peak hour traffic congestion and overcrowded public
transport by flying to work in your own
personal autonomous passenger drone.
What was the science fiction is now a real-
ity- the Enhang 184The passenger vertical-
takeoff- and landing aircraft uses eight
electric motors to power eight propellers,
which can carry one person weighing up to
100kg in a small cabin.
Page-12Faculty of Engineering & Technology
With a flight ceiling of 3.5 Km and cruising speed of 100Km, the Enhang-184 has a flight
time of 25 minutes and can cover 30-50 km from a single charge-it takes two hours to re-
charge.Enhang-184 is a tested automated passenger drone that required no license or previ-
ous flying experience. Everything is operated from command center. This has engineers able
to control drones wherever they are in the world.Ehang-184 wouldn’t be cheap. Its cost will
be $270,000 to $370,000.
Nowadays, Drone education is also expanding;
Embry-riddle aeronautical university, long a
training ground for aviation industry.Apart from
all the above applications of drone. Researchers
in Sweden have drones in mind for a different,
potentially lifesaving delivery.
Drones carry Automated External Defibrillators
(AED) to people who are in cardiac arrest could reduce the time between then patients go
into cardiac arrest and when they receive the first shock from AED. Shocking someone
within three minutes gives them the best. More than 300000 cardiac arrest across the Europe
the place other than hospitals each year. This is really an innovative method to combat prob-
lem that we have been struggling with for decades. Trials flights have shown the drones can
arrive at a destination four times faster than an ambulance. Drone Ambulance is another in-
novation. In some rural areas, people can be left waiting hours for emergency support. New
Drone ambulance has been designed so to cut wait times and save lives. It doesn’t need a pi-
lot, and it is small enough to land on a street, unlike a large helicopter ambulance. The drone
is modeled on a standard Quad copter and is driven by GPS, a pilot or a combination of
both. It could quickly be sent to an emergency where it would dispatch its emergency medi-
cal technician to provide help. It has some se-
curity issues with it. The huge demand of
drones has sparked complaints and concerns.
Drones are deployed in areas seemed to be po-
tentially unsafe; such as urban areas and near
airports Personal.
“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on
science and technology, in which hardly any-
one knows anything about science and technol-
ogy”----Carl Sagan
Ms. Rashmi
Assistant Professor,
(Electronics and Communications Engineering)
Faculty of Engineering and Technology,
GNA University
THE GNA UNIVERSITY’s DELEGATION to FORGETECH
Page-13Faculty of Engineering & Technology
“Navigational Beacon”
Global Positioning System (GPS), a space-based global navigation satellite
system, dispenses geo-location to a GPS receiver. An unobstructed LOS (Line
-of-Sight) between four or more satellites is imperative for GPS to furnish
time-based location stats. Thus, it becomes grueling for GPS system to detect
exact location of objects or people inside buildings in the absence of essential
requisites. Now, it is no more difficult to track objects or people moving
around even in a crowed place. Credit all goes to Beacons technology or inter-
changeably called as iBea-
con technology. iBeacons
have been installed on vari-
ous retail shops and inter-
national airports. Airport
vendors uses iBeacons to
trace location of people so
as to provide them relevant
personalized information
that might be their gate
number or a baggage car-
ousel, flight status and
much more.
Beacons technology is
catching fire today in the
way it is capable of con-
necting with people. iBea-
con is a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) enabled technology launched by Apple.
BLE is ideal for applications requiring lesser information transferal. Moreo-
ver, it is 60-80% cheaper than classic Bluetooth. Here, beacons refer to small
and cheap Bluetooth transmitters. Signals are broadcasted in small packets of
data from beacons or BLE devices with emission of radio waves. Mobile apps
are utilized to communicate with signals from beacons installed around.
Broadcasting of data is a one-way communication. Beacons that want to be
discovered can advertise or broadcast their packets of information at regular
set intervals of time.
Apple has standardized a format in which message is broadcasted. Format
consists of mainly four sections of information:
UUID: It is a 16-byte long string that distinguishes between beacons of di-
verse groups. For example, all flights of a particular airline will be having
same UUID. This UUID helps mobile app to distinguish which beacons are
from which airlines.
Page-14 helps to locate section where passenger would be. Suppose five beacons
have been installed at terminal 1, then all five will be having same major.
Minor: This 2-byte string gives exact coordinates of passenger. Assuming
five beacons within a section, each beacon will be having its unique minor.
Transmitter power: This parameter helps in detecting range of passenger
from beacon.
For example: A beacon broadcasts a message with following set of parameters:
UUID: 65335978912335
Major: 21
Minor: 03
Device after receiving this message would come to know that beacon is from
XYZ airlines (UUID), installed at which place (major) and at which particular
point (minor). It will be followed by personalized information that airline
wanted to flash on your device. There are numerous applications of beacons or
BLE technology. Apart from airports, beacons are seeking attention at retail
shops. Beacons help retailers in tracing customers and tempt them with amaz-
ing sale/purchase offers. These are even helpful at music events, concerts or art
galleries in providing shortest exit path or detailed artistic information. Bea-
cons can even help you in mobile payments.
This real-time targeting technology of beacons is very much beneficial in
providing us with updated information on where you are, what is around you,
what you can do in your surroundings and a lot more. It is a preferable option
for in-door mapping where GPS struggles. Amalgamation of Low energy foot
print, good range, minimal maintenance makes beacons much more than a
techie fad. This digital extension into physical world would bring a paradigm
shift in the way brands communicate with their customers. Amazing features
are expected in this beacon system by this year end.
Ms. Samridhi
Assistant Professor (Electronics and
Communications Engineering)
Faculty of Engineering and Technology,
GNA University
Page-15Faculty of Engineering & Technology
Autonomous “soaring with solar concept”
With every machine being
automated we are proceeding
towards the era of unmanned
systems technology. In aero-
dynamics domain Autono-
mous Soaring techniques
have already been prevalent
from quite a few years but
still the research has been in
continuation to make it more
usable, competent and relia-
ble.
A famous quote by Albert
Szent-Gyorgyi “Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what no-
body else has thought.”
Recently researchers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), Vehicle Research
Section and Photovoltaic Section are building on the proven concept of autonomous co-
operative soaring of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Their research investigates the
presence of solar photo voltaics (PV) to the cooperative autonomous soaring techniques,
which enables long endurance flights of unmanned sailplanes that use the power of the
sun.
A photovoltaic array, custom built in NRL's Vehicle Research Section and Photovoltaic
Section, is integrated into the center wing panel of the PV-SBXC aircraft as a drop-in re-
placement to the original wing. A power management and distribution system converts
the power from the solar arrays into direct current (DC) voltage, which the electric motor
can use for propulsion, or recharge a 'smart battery.'
Additionally, an autonomous soaring software algorithm that would typically monitor the
local vertical winds around the aircraft commands the aircraft to orbit in any nearby up-
drafts, very similar to soaring birds. However, the algorithm was disabled for the two so-
lar flights in order to assess the solar-only performance. Passive soaring meaning no spe-
cific manoeuvres are attempted to catch thermals was still allowed, to let the aircraft turn
the motor off if altitude increased because of an updraft along the aircraft's pre-defined
flight path. The autonomous soaring software was tested extensively in previous flight
demonstrations in late October 2015.
Page-16“All you need is the plan, the road map, and the courage to press on to your destina-
tion.”
The Solar Photovoltaic and Autono-
mous Soaring Base Program and the
U.S. Marine Corps' Expeditionary
Energy Office (E2O) want to im-
prove the ability of unmanned plat-
forms to support a 24-7 information,
surveillance, and reconnaissance
(ISR) mission. By doing so, the war
fighter will greatly benefit because it will reduce the amount of batteries or fuel they must
carry into battle, and improve the availability of continuous coverage of ISR assets.
Dr. Dan Edwards, an aerospace engineers have told that NRL has twice flown their solar
UAV [based on the SBXC sailplane] over 10 hours using a combination of solar photo
voltaics and autonomous soaring as part of the 'solar-soaring' research program. This re-
search is investigating the value of combining autonomous soaring algorithms and solar
photo voltaics for capturing energy from the environment to extend flight endurance and
mission operations of an aircraft.
The UAV with solar arrays built at NRL using Sun Power Inc. solar cells, flew for 10
hours, 50 minutes on October 14, 2016. Take-off occurred at 7:20 a.m. at 95 percent bat-
tery state of charge and landing occurred at 6:10 p.m. with the battery at 10 percent state
of charge. Thermal activity was very good in the middle of the day and 40 percent of the
flight was spent with the motor off, and the solar array partly recharged the battery while
the motor was off.
The Vehicle Research Section at NRL conducts research to develop technologies for au-
tonomous, affordably expendable, unmanned systems that carry a wide variety of pay-
loads for numerous mission scenarios. The Photo voltaics Section at NRL conducts re-
search to develop photovoltaic (solar cell) technologies to enable logistics free, renewa-
ble, portable, power sources for the war fighter. They are composed of physicists, electri-
cal engineers, and chemists dedicated to advancing the state-of-the-art in PV power
sources and systems.
Hence the vision of everything being automated to reach the horizons where human inter-
vention has not taken place is soon going to be factual.
Vaishali Bahl
Assistant Professor, (Electronics and
Communications Engineering)
Faculty of Engineering and Technology,
GNA University
Page-17Faculty of Engineering & Technology
“ISRO’s most powerful Rocket GSLV Mk-III”
India on 5 June 2017, scripted history as it effectively propelled its heaviest
rocket Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark-III (GSLV
MkIII) conveying communication satellite GSAT-19. The GSLV Mk-III rock-
et, on its first formative flight, threw the 3,136 kg communication satellite in a
geosynchronous transfer orbit from where it would be taken up to its last geo-
stationary circle.
Exactly at 5.28 pm, the GSLV Mk-III rocket, on its maiden flight, started it's
rising towards space from the second platform at the Satish Dhawan Space
Center (SDSC) at the Sriharikota spaceport here. A little more than 16 minutes
into its flight, the 43.43 meters tall,
640-ton rocket, threw the GSAT-19
at its proposed circle at a height of
179 km.
The GSAT-19, as per the Indian
Space Research Organisation is a
multi-beam satellite that carries Ka
and Ku band forward and return link
transponders and geostationary
Radiation spectrometer (GRASP)
Page-18to monitor and study the nature of charged particles and the influence of space
radiation on satellites and their electronic components.
The satellite, which has a life span of 10 years, also features certain advanced
spacecraft technologies including miniaturized heat pipe, a fibre optic gyro,
micro electromechanical systems accelerometer Ku-band TTC transponder, as
well an indigenous lithium – Ion battery.
The GSLV MkIII-D1/GSAT-19 Mission is the first developmental flight of
GSLV MkIII, a heavy lift launch vehicle, capable of lofting payloads up to
4,000 kg into Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) and 10,000 kg into Low
Earth Orbit (LEO). The GSLV Mk-III is a three stage/engine rocket. The core
of the first stage is fired with solid fuel and its two motors by liquid fuel.
The second is liquid fuel and the third is the cryogenic engine. The rocket’s de-
sign carrying capacity is four tonnes. The payload will be gradually increased
in future flights. The Indian space agency had flown a similar rocket without
the cryogenic engine but with 3.7-tonne payload in 2014 mainly to test its
structural stability
and aerodynamics.
Interestingly, GSLV-
Mk III at around 43
meters is slightly
shorter than Mk-II
version that is
around 49 meters
tall. Due to the in-
crease in the diame-
ters of various stag-
es, the height got re-
duced despite a dras-
tic increase in the
weight - from around 415 ton of GSLV-Mk II to 640 ton in GSLV-Mk III.
Mr. Ashutosh Kainth
Aerospace Engineer
Faculty of Engineering and Technology,
GNA University
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