Aiming for the moon and beyond

From the website of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT Bombay):

Space missions are amongst the most technology and research intensive projects a country could take up. Chandrayaan-2 will comprise an orbiter, a lander, and a lunar rover. A number of extremely complex systems have to work in perfect synchronization to ensure a successful operation and execution of the project. Once the spacecraft reaches the outer space, satellite navigation becomes the most crucial part of the mission. The basic task of a satellite navigation system is the prediction of spacecraft position and velocity. Extensive research is employed to find novel methods to do this accurately in real time, for efficient tracking of spacecrafts and initiation of steps for trajectory correction, if required.

A M. Tech. student Sanat Kumar Biswas and Prof. Hablani of Aerospace Department in IIT Bombay, took up this daunting challenge to develop a navigation system that could be put into use for the Chandrayaan-2 mission. Sanat’s project focuses on building algorithms to predict the trajectory of a spacecraft using the data collected by the ground stations (via spacecraft transmissions) while the spacecraft is in flight.

The results from this work were extraordinary. The final error in position and velocity at the time of arrival at the moon were within 30 kms and 1.5 m/s respectively. Although the error is low in view of the length of the trajectory, the authors believes scope for improvements exists and could be incorporated to make the algorithm application ready. These results were obtained without the use of any high end computational facilities. With higher computational power at disposal, more complex and accurate models can be incorporated into the algorithm.

Check out this brilliant work of Sanat Kumar Biswas : http://www.iitb.ac.in/en/research-highlight/aiming-moon-and-beyond