Sunita Williams, NASA Astronaut, gave a guest lecture at Zephyr 2007 on experiences of her recent space journey to the International Space Station (ISS), an aero festival organised by aerospace engineering department of IIT Bombay, Powai, on 6th October. It was an interactive session where the students were able to get the real scenario in the space.
Recently in her space journey to ISS, Sunita Williams had completed 195 days in space, which is the longest uninterrupted stay by a woman. Also, she holds the record for the maximum duration of space walk by a woman (29 hours and 17 minutes), because of the tasks she carried out outside the International Space Station. And she is the only astronaut to have run a marathon in space.
Sunita Williams in her address described her recent space journey to the ISS as “beautiful summer vacation”. During her address, she gave running lectures on a video footage taken in the ISS. She spoke about the ISS, the countries involved in the formation of the ISS, her zero gravity experience in the space station, kind of work in the space station, maintaining fitness in the space station, communication to the earth and finally about the return journey to the earth.
Her lecture had been taken as a video and posted in the following links. Watch the videos to get to know more about the happenings in the International Space Station.
Shaastra, the technical festival of IIT-Madras started with overwhelming response. ‘Yu-Fly’, a project undertaken by the second year students of IIT-M, featuring Vertical Take Off and Landing) VTOL aircrafts was demonstrated yesterday. The Yu-Fly project implements a working model of the VTOL aircraft based on a principle called the “Coanda Effect”.
In general, a lift is produced when there is a pressure difference in the wings of the aircraft, i.e, low pressure in the top and high pressure in the bottom of the wing. Since atmospheric pressure is high enough, if we just create a low pressure on the top of the wing, we can generate lift. This is where the Coanda Effect can help us in providing vertical thrust. The Coanda Effect states that fluid flowing on a surface sticks to the surface rather than flowing tangentially to it. It is easily demonstrated by holding the back of a spoon vertically under a thin stream of water (See the figure below).
The Coanda Effect works with any of our usual fluids, such as air at usual temperatures, pressures, and speeds. The air stream gets pushed against a surface, even when the surface is curved away from the direction of flow. The air pressure between the air stream and surface is lower if the surface is curved away from the flow. When blowing an air stream close to a solid surface, there is a drop of air pressure in between the air stream and the surface. The ambient air at the other sides of the air stream and surface pushes the two together as it has higher pressure than the pressure in between the two. And further if surface is curved, the curved surface causes a continuing acceleration of the air stream, and thus a continuing area of low pressure between the air stream and the surface. Thus, applying Coanda Effect on the top of the wing will produce a lift as there is ambient pressure at the bottom of the wing. If we apply the Coanda Effect in addition to the conventional propeller lift, the aircraft will have a higher efficiency than most other VTOL aircraft of today.
The IIT Students used a quadrotor structure (consisting of 4 individual units working together) to minimise net unbalanced torque. For their model, they used special light weight foam called Depron for the body of the craft. The quadrotor configuration gives superior stability, and hence better control. Their craft can lift up to 1.2 meters and stay stable.
Here is the video taken by IITM Students on the eve of Shaastra. Watch It!
The primary objective of the Chandrayaan-I mission is high resolution remote sensing of the moon in visible, near infrared, low energy X-rays and high energy X-ray regions. To know more about specific objectives, spacecraft, payloads, ground segment and launch vehicle of Chandrayaan, visit the official ISRO site given below.
Official Video about the lunar mission had been released. The video gives lot of information about the mission objectives, how the lunar craft is going to be launched, the trajectory it is going to follow before placing it in the orbit and the data we are going to get about the moon from the payloads on board. This is a nice video. Watch it!
ISRO Video on Chandrayaan
Thejes Inc, has done a another good video about Chandrayaan. The video gives details about the launch vehicle, the lunar craft, complete trajectory and the objectives of the mission. Also, The video has the vision 2020 with some animations about Chandrayaan – II, a rover on moon and manned mission to the moon in 2020. Watch it!
Thejes Video on Chandrayaan
The above shown Thejes video can be directly downloaded from the following link.
