Mission Vimaan Project Report

INDIAN SPACE ORGANISATION FOR ADVANCEMENTS IN

CONDITIONAL LAUNCHES

PROJECT REPORT — MISSION VIMAAN

by
Sai Abhiram

Mission directors (alphabetical order)

Chetan Raj
Dweep Joshipura
Sai Abhiram Murali

DRAFT 2
11TH JUNE 2020

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Mission Vimaan Project Report

I. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

W e convey our special thanks to Mrs. Ashika, our physics teacher at National
Public School, and Mr. Sham Rao, Scientist/Engineer-‘SF’, Mechanisms
Design and Development Division, Spacecraft Mechanisms Group, UR Rao Satellite
Centre, Bangalore, for their great support given during the course of the whole
project.

II. a. INTRODUCTION

A real observation has become a very relevant topic nowadays. Every country has
students and atmospheric research agencies launching a number of observation
weather balloons everyday. A typical observation balloon captures the footage of the
earth as seen from a very high altitude, usually 90,000ft, where we aim to reach. Near
space is the region of Earth’s atmosphere that lies between 20 to 100 km above sea
level, encompassing the stratosphere, mesosphere, and the lower thermosphere. There
is a surge of interest in flying balloons to the edge of near space in recent years,
largely for recreational and educational purposes due to the major reduction in costs
of all the involved components, from inexpensive latex balloons to easily available
lightweight, compact, and simple in operation micro-electromechanical (MEM)
devices. However, the same availability allows also to apply this to the scientific
objectives, to do serious science at low cost. Though space observatories provide
accurate observations of remote or faint space sources, they are also prohibitively
expensive and only affordable to large governmental agencies.

b. ESSENTIALS FOR BALLOON FLIGHTS

i. BALLOON: Many types of balloons are used for high-altitude balloon
experiments depending on the size of the payload, scientific objectives and the
scale of the programme. Latex balloons, also known as sounding or weather
balloons, are designed to reach 35–40 km and burst, after which a parachute is
deployed to safely carry the payload back to Earth. They are low-cost, easily
available and, since they usually do not exceed volumes of 3 m3 on the ground,
are easy and inexpensive to launch. We buy the helium balloon from Pawan
rubber products, Pune, where the teams from ISRO usually buy balloons from.
ii. GAS USED FOR THE BALLOON FILLING: Helium as an inert gas is
considered the safest for filling the balloons. We plant to buy gas (helium) for the
launch from Sri Vinayaka Gas Agency, Bangalore, India.
iii. PARACHUTE: Parachutes used in high-altitude ballooning are usually made out
of ripstop nylon. We obtain parachutes from Pawan rubber products, as they are
of good quality and relatively inexpensive, specially designed for high-altitude
balloon payload recovery.
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Mission Vimaan Project Report

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Motivation………………………………………………………….1

2. Scope and Objectives………………………………………………1

3. Mission Overview

a. Launching…………………………………………………….2
b. Landing……………………………………………………….2

4. Design details

a. Payloads……………………………………………………….3

b. Mechanical Design…………………………………………….3

5. Electrical components……………………………………………..4

6. Artificial Intelligence System………………………………………5

7. Statutory requirements for the mission initiation…………………6

8. Flight Sequence……………………………………………………7

9. Conclusion………………………………………………………..8

10. Appendix…………………………………………………………9

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Mission Vimaan Project Report

1. MOTIVATION:
We were inspired by Chandrayaan and Mangalyaan, though there is no possible
match with the ISRO scientists, neither between their budget, nor between their
expertise. But all we could match with that of theirs, is the hard work and
forethought-all we’ve learnt from them! Also, ones country is enough to motivate the
students to do something which would make their country proud, exactly what
happened in our cases.
2. SCOPE AND OBJECTIVES:
• The scope of the mission is to launch a mini satellite(Abhimanyu) using an
atmospheric balloon and land the same somewhere near the launch base using a
parachute.
Objectives:
- Understand the usage of a balloon system to launch a space capsule of
approximately 1 kg.
- Unfurl the Indian National Flag at 90,000ft.
- Obtain footage of the Launch and Landing.
- Landing of the space capsule using a parachute with landing velocity < 0.5 m/s.

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3. MISSION OVERVIEW:
Launching:
We aim to launch the payload in an open space, far from the city site. We would
require permission for launching from the concerned authorities, to avoid clashes with
air vehicles. We would obtain information about airspace constraints from the ATC
of Yelahanka airbase, Jakkur airbase, probably even from Kempegowda International
Airport(if international and domestic flights have a frequency of nearly the normal
number).
Launch Vehicle/Launch Mechanism:
A helium balloon will be used to launch Abhimanyu into the atmospheric layers.
High-altitude balloons are manned or unmanned balloons(in our case), usually filled
with helium or hydrogen, or in some cases methane, that are released into the
stratosphere, generally attaining between 18 and 37 km (11 and 23 mi; 59,000 and
121,000 ft) above sea level. The most common type of high-altitude balloons are
weather balloons. Other purposes include use as a platform for experiments in the
upper atmosphere. Our balloon contains electronic equipment such as cameras,
satellite navigation systems(GPS).
The balloon is launched into what is termed "near space", defined as the area of
Earth's atmosphere between the Armstrong limit (18–19 km above sea level), where
pressure falls to the point that a human being could not survive without a pressurised
suit, and the Mesopause (85 km above sea level), where astrodynamics must take over
from aerodynamics in order to maintain flight.
We have procured our helium balloon and the parachute from Pawan Rubber
Products, Pune.

Landing:
We depend on a phenomenon of the helium balloon bursting at its burst altitude. As
the balloon ascends, the pressure of its environment decreases, and the balloon begins
to expand. This expansion continues until the material of the balloon is stretched to
its breaking point, causing the balloon to burst. This typically occurs at stratospheric
altitudes between 30 and 35 km. A typical weather balloon of 2ft radius, usually, at its
burst altitude, expands till a radius 10ft. Once this happens, the propulsion force is
lost in the form of the helium gas leaked out. Now, as far as the landing is concerned,
the payload, from that altitude descends, merely by the gravitational force acting
upon it due to its weight. When the payload is descending, the parachute will open
up, giving the payload enough drag. Since the descent happens at a high velocity, a
parachute is an indispensable part of the Mission.
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4. DESIGN DETAILS:
a. Payloads:
Definition of the payload of a balloon: Payload is
defined as the difference between the mass of displaced
air and the mass of the balloon. Calculate the payload,
when a balloon of radius 10 m of mass 100 kg is filled
with helium at 1.66 bar at 27˚C.

Definition: Equipment, personnel, or satellites carried by a spacecraft.

Weight: 1kg
We propose to launch a satellite-like payload box, which we call Abhimanyu, some
time in August(subject to tower weather and touchdown conditions vis-a-vis data of
the forecasts on course, also predictions of landing site based on jet stream direction
and speed). Abhimanyu is sized approximately 25 by 25 by 25 cm. However, the
payload will not be a cube, but would be like a trapezoid, to give a good aerodynamic
thrust. The weight of the payload, along with electronic components would be about
1 kg, approximately.(Weight brought down from 3kg(stated in draft 1 of the report) to
1 kg due to propulsion demands)
b. Mechanical design:

We have a payload looking like the design(left) shown above and the first model(right)
made. The first payload body(image to the right) has not been used due to its large
size which does not fit into the allowed weight of the empty payload body(800 g). We
have decided that the payload body along with the landing gears should not exceed a
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weight of 500 g.

The study of the properties of moving air and the interaction between the air and
solid bodies moving through it is aerodynamics.

The properties of a solid object regarding the manner in which air flows around it.We
have focused on the aerodynamics of the payload. Now, what is the use of
aerodynamics? An aerodynamically balanced payload box or the satellite is what we
have tried to design. The balloon has to carry the payload box against gravity. If we
had to have the whole propulsion weightage given to the balloon, the velocity would
be less as the payload box, if it was aerodynamically unbalanced, the payload would
give a drag. To avoid this, the body has got a streamlined design towards the top of
the satellite(namely, its roof).
5. ELECTRICAL COMPONENTS:
The electrical components include:
- Raspberry pi module: The Raspberry Pi is a low cost, credit-card sized computer
that plugs into a computer monitor or TV, and uses a standard keyboard and
mouse.
- Arduino uno: The Arduino Uno is an open-source microcontroller board based on
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the Microchip ATmega328P microcontroller and developed by Arduino.cc.

The board is equipped with sets of digital and analog input/output (I/O) pins
that may be interfaced to various expansion boards (shields) and other circuits.
- Servo motor: A servomotor is a rotary actuator or linear actuator that allows for
precise control of angular or linear position, velocity and acceleration. It consists
of a suitable motor coupled to a sensor for position feedback.
- Temperature and humidity sensor: The sensor comes with a dedicated NTC to
measure temperature and an 8-bit microcontroller to output the values of
temperature and humidity as serial data. ... The sensor can measure temperature
from 0°C to 50°C and humidity from 20% to 90% with an accuracy of ±1°C and
±1%.
- Pressure sensor: A pressure sensor is a device for pressure measurement of gases or
liquids. Pressure is an expression of the force required to stop a fluid from
expanding, and is usually stated in terms of force per unit area. A pressure sensor
usually acts as a transducer; it generates a signal as a function of the pressure
imposed.
- Altitude sensor: An altimeter or an altitude meter is an instrument used to measure
the altitude of an object above a fixed level. The measurement of altitude is called
altimetry.
- GPS aided mobile phone: A GPS tracking system uses the Global Navigation
Satellite System (GNSS) network. This network incorporates a range of satellites
that use microwave signals that are transmitted to GPS devices to give information
on location, vehicle speed, time and direction.

6. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE:
AI SYSTEM:
RGB camera footage is live-streamed to the RaspberryPi, which parses it into a
matrix of 224 x 224 x 3 after which it is slightly preprocessed into a u-Net trained on
the mid-air dataset in a process called semantic segmentation.

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After the image on the right is achieved, if majority of the pixels output a water
reading the life vest would be advantageous in landing the payload on water. Mid-Air,
The Monte-fire Institute Dataset of Aerial Images and Records, is a multi-purpose
synthetic dataset for low altitude drone flights. It provides a large amount of
synchronised data corresponding to flight records for multi-modal vision sensors and
navigation sensors mounted on board of a flying quadcopter. Our multi-modal vision
sensors capture RGB pictures, relative surface normal orientation, depth, object
semantics and stereo disparity.

7. STATUTORY REQUIREMENTS FOR THE LAUNCH:

Since Bangalore is a hub of AirForce bases along with airports and flying training
schools, we had to take prior permissions from DGCA and MoD, Delhi. In addition,
we need local permissions from Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), Bangalore
International Airport Limited (BIAL), Chennai airport as a southern region
headquarters, Jakkur flying school, Yelahanka AirForce Base, AirForce station at
Chimney hills, Bangalore. It is a regulation that we inform the above mentioned
offices about the balloon launch two weeks in advance, specifying the payload details.
Launches are only allowed after obtaining all the required No-Objection Certificates
(NOCs).
LOCATION(HOWEVER NOT DECIDED):
We will have to take permission for this, however, the best place would be any empty
place near the Kempegowda International Airport, Bengaluru. There are two
advantages for the same: I) The airport is usually built over a selected place, usually at
a descent altitude, which is advantageous for us; and II) There is ample empty space
for launch near Devanahalli(Airport Road). There are less airplanes which ply
currently, and the same is expected throughout the year, due to less International and
domestic flights are also expected to be very less frequent. However, retrieval is still
unpredictable(prediction can happen only 48hrs before launch date)
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Mission Vimaan Project Report RETRIEVAL

8. FLIGHT SEQUENCE:

DEPLOY OF
PARACHUTE

FAIRING
SEPARATION

STAGING

MAX Q

LIFT OFF

TERMINAL
COUNTDOWN
Mission Vimaan Project Report

TIME EVENTS COMMENT

T — 8MINS ELECTRONICS All electronic systems are checked before launch
CHECK
T — 4MINS GO/NO GO All the department heads do final checks and
approve
T — 2MINS TERMINAL Countdown T—120 starts
COUNTDOWN
T—0 LAUNCH The payload is launched
The payload is under maximum aerodynamic
MAX Q pressure. Also, the balloon is at the maximum
T + 150MINS diameter with dip in pressure causing it to burst
STAGING The burst of the balloon is the first event part of
staging
T + 153-155MINS FAIRING The payload getting separated from the balloon and
SEPARATIOM falling down due to gravity symbolises the fairing
separation. To be identified by altitude meter
readings dipping
T + 160MINS PARACHUTE The parachute opens up.
DEPLOY

9. CONCLUSION:
Mission Vimaan is the first initiation by ISAAC which aims to launch a payload called
Abhimanyu into the Atmospheric layers, referred to as what is called “near space”.
We are an ambitious group of students who have set their objective to unfurl the
Indian National Flag at a breathtaking height of 90,000-1,00,000ft above mean sea
level. Also, we are to capture footage of the earth as seen from that height and also
measure atmospheric conditions with certain parameters(temperature, humidity,
pressure and altitude).

This is the first time we are undertaking such a deep research program. Also, we will
be the first in the world to unfurl our National Flag. We hope, that we would get great
results with our try!
10. APPENDIX:
The flag mechanism:
We are to use Arduino and servo to do the flag mechanism. Arduino uno is a micro
controller which helps communicate with our base station and the servo.
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Standard servos allow the shaft to be positioned at various angles, usually between 0
and 180 degrees. Continuous rotation servos allow the rotation of the shaft to be set
to various speeds. The Servo library supports up to 12 motors on most Arduino
boards and 48 on the Arduino Mega. Servos are clever devices. Using just one input
pin, they receive the position from the Arduino and they go there. Internally, they
have a motor driver and a feedback circuit that makes sure that the servo arm reaches
the desired position. The flag is fixed to the servo arm and due to the movement of
the servo arm, the flag too moves up and comes to the window of Camera#2.

**** END OF PROJECT REPORT ****