Earth-inspired solution to a space problem
Three engineering students attempt to revolutionize how humans can combat radiation to live beyond our planet
Team EARS is three friends who came together out of a mutual interest in the stars, as members of the Astronomy Club at the Kolhapur Institute of Technology. Saumil Vaidya is a mechanical engineering student at KIT, Aniket Kamat is studying electrical engineering and Aishwarya Mungale is studying physics.
It was Saumil’s brother who first saw news of the Lab2Moon contest in the paper in June 2016, and brought it to Saumil’s attention. He was already working on every student experiment he could find that had anything to do with space, so when he discovered there was a way to test out his ideas on the moon, he would not let it pass him by.
That’s when Saumil, Aishwarya and Aniket put their heads together to work on a concept. They decided that since one of the major challenges of space colonization is tackling deadly radiation, they would face it head on. For inspiration, they turned to nature: Earth’s own magnetic field.
Material-free = cheaper + better
Human space travel is impossible without radiation shielding, and if we need to survive outside this planet, the forms of shielding currently in use would call for large amounts of material to be transported from Earth. ‘If you can cut down on this, you bring down launch cost significantly,’ says Aishwarya. Additionally, any material has a lifespan — over time, its capacity to block radiation reduces.
‘We felt the idea has to multiply in itself, has to be sustainable,’ says Saumil.
So the team turned to the Van de Graaff generator, which uses a small belt to generate static electricity. The instrument is commonly available to even school kids, but no one had thought about this sort of application for it before.
‘If we succeed, we will be the first people in the world to demonstrate active radiation shielding in space,’ says Aniket. The experiment needs to be performed in a vacuum, and the team believes the best lab on Earth does not compare to the moon.
The three have worked well together as a team, despite being at different locations through the development process. When Lab2Moon entries opened, Saumil had started research at the Defense Institute of Advanced Technology on developing armor plating against gunfire for vehicles. That’s when he started working on the mechanical specs for Lab2Moon, and then Aniket worked on the electrical circuits, and he’d ship the payload to Aishwarya who would run experiments at the lab in Goa University.
‘If we can see the stars, why can’t we go to them?’
They pursued their ideas, submitted their concepts in August of 2016. Then the team started working immediately on the prototype, to be prepared in case they were shortlisted. First order of business: building the circuit. They decided to run tests on a cathode ray tube. This provided validation to the claim that the experiment needed extremely low pressure — like that on the moon — to work. ‘When we tampered with the tube, air entered inside,’ explains Saumil.
Then they tried out different kinds of circuits, and found them all inappropriate or difficult to control. Till they came to the Van de Graaff generator, and things fell into place.
Finally, when the news came in November that Team EARS had made it to the shortlist, it was time to answer the big question: ‘Can we really fly this thing?’
They had one month to build an express prototype, and when that was approved by TeamIndus, they started refining the idea over the next four months, working on the mechanics and bringing it down to the prescribed mass of 250 grams. During that stage too, there were several reviews with mentor Deepana Gandhi, flight dynamics engineer. Finally, they presented their experiments in March 2017 to the panel of Dr K. Kasturirangan, ex-chairman of ISRO; Dr Alain Bensoussan, former head of the French space agency; and Dr Priyamvada Natarajan, professor of astrophysics, Yale University. And they made it through to the final eight!
In May 2017, work started with the TeamIndus engineers. Saumil and Aniket came back to Bangalore for dedicated internships to work on their project. Aishwarya came back to work in between exams. ‘I came to TeamIndus twice before the internship, and I saw the young engineers, the smartest brains of the country working here, and I felt what was happening was more important than research.’
Aniket spent his summer holidays at Bangalore — and then some. ‘The best lesson is that nothing is impossible. Every time we have to ask ourselves how we can do it better.’
‘Overall, we have come so far.’
It is now a year since the initial concept had been submitted, and it has been a demanding process to turn the Team EARS vision into reality. ‘To be frank, we never imagined we’d get to this level,’ says Saumil. The opportunity for learning of the life-long kind has been tremendous. ‘On a day-to-day basis, we may not be able to feel it, but overall we have come so far,’ says Aishwarya.
While the team has made very little change to the overall design of the model they submitted, ’80 per cent’ of the work was still ahead of them, as they were soon to discover.
It started with convincing themselves that it would work. Then, they had the task of making it fit in with the rest of the mission; and the many factors they had not yet considered, such as how orbital mechanics would affect the experiment, positioning of their payload on the spacecraft, and what turned out to be the biggest problem: ensuring their experiment does not pose a threat to the mission.
The Team EARS experiment involves 500kv of electric potential, and they had to ensure it was all contained within the experiment.
Nothing but the highest degree of rigor was acceptable from the engineers and the ISRO veterans who collaborated to oversee every stage of the development process.
Then there was the issue of whether the dust thrown up during the soft-landing would affect the mechanism. Experiments proved that no, any dust would be thrown off and allow the tests to perform as planned.
There is still work to be done, ahead of the critical design review in September, manufacturing and testing. Saumil is still in Bangalore and Aniket and Aishwarya come and go as required, taking out time from their already demanding academic schedules.
But they started with a dream to send an experiment to the moon, and that is what keeps them committed. A dream, and a question: ‘If we can see the stars, why can’t we go to them?’
