ASTRA 2020

NASA landed humans on the moon. NASA is now poised for its next great transformation: the robot revolution. Here on Earth, robots are performing increasingly complex tasks in ever more challenging settings—medical surgery, automated driving, and bomb disposal are just a few examples of the important work of robots.

Space robotics plays a critical role in current and future space exploration missions and enables mission-defined machines that are capable of surviving in the space environment and performing exploration, assembly, construction, maintenance, or service tasks. In space, robots deployed at planetary bodies could construct and maintain space assets, autonomously explore difficult terrain, and even clean up space debris. Future exploration opportunities will be limited only by our imagination.

Deep space navigation enables missions to precisely target distant solar system bodies and particular sites of interest on them. Navigation takes place in real-time for spacecraft operation and control. It can also be used for creating higher-fidelity reconstructions of a craft’s trajectory for future course corrections, and for scientific and operational purposes.

Existing navigation techniques — Doppler, range, Delta-DOR, on-board optical — have been used in varying degrees since the early 1960s to navigate spacecraft with ever-increasing precision and accuracy. Future missions will build on these successful developments to meet tightening performance requirements and growing demands for spacecraft that can respond autonomously to new environments including atmospheric winds, comet outgassing jets and high radiation.

The development, operation, and analysis of data from cubesats can promote science education and spur technology utilization in emerging and developing nations. Their small size and weight enables cubesats to 'piggyback' on rocket launches and accompany orbiters travelling to Moon and Mars. It is envisaged that constellations of cubesats will be used for larger science missions.

Space missions require materials that can preserve functional integrity under extreme conditions of heat, impact and radiation. The accompanying structural design must ensure that the craft can persevere and navigate optimally in these harsh conditions. Starting from the launch phase, spacecrafts face high vibrations, acoustic and shock levels, lightning and bird strikes. Once in orbit, space materials and structures are exposed to vacuum, atomic oxygen, high solar and cosmic radiations, as well as hyper velocity impact collisions with micrometeoroids and orbital debris. For planetary exploration, re-entry aerothermodynamics effects and specific planet environment are acting on the vehicles.

While many countries including India have planned manned missions to space in the coming years, our primary tools for studying mystery filled terrains of Mars and the Moon are still unmanned vehicles. Optimizing the structure, robustness and controls of these vehicles decides the cost effectiveness of space missions, how long we can continue to operate and ultimately how much we are able to learn about what lies in the depths of our celestial neighbours. These new age space vehicles will help future robots and astronauts explore more than ever before, build a long-term space presence and conduct a wealth of science experiments. From NASA's Opportunity to India's Pragyaan, the era of space exploration is paved by new and improved extraterrestrial automotives.

Satellites are the height of modern communications technology. Being a central part of space technologies, communication determines our sphere of influence beyond the Karman Line. While communicating with satellites is crucial and forms the basis of many networks such as telecommunication and geographical mapping, synchronous and efficient operation between satellites and ground networks poses many challenges with tangible consequences here on Earth.

With newer technologies in satellite networks namely SpaceX's Starlink, the satellite constellation, precise control, seamless synchronisation and robust communication become the key for technology in the space age.

Elon Musk, Steve Squyres, K Radhakrishnan, three names that will make it into history books only because they created what others could scarcely imagine. Have an idea that doesn't fit in with our themes? Open innovation is your platform to showcase your unique idea that proposes a novel approach to solving any problem faced by scientists and engineers in the space industry.

From detecting exoplanets and their chemistry to listening to gravitational waves to navigating extraterrestrial rovers, artificial intelligence and machine learning have broadened the horizon of space exploration and understanding of the universe. Integrating intelligence into space technology will truly allow us to have automated space crafts, synchronized satellites and even self sustaining colonies. Are you upto the challenge?

Data can unravel things helping us challenge the our limits everyday. Space science has multitudes of data, be it the streams of radio signals from the VLA or the stunning full spectral images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Studying, classifying and searching this data efficiently is a herculean task and poses challenges to analysts and scientists across the globe. Automating this collection and analysis could pave the path to numerous discoveries about the intricate workings of our Universe.

Quantum computers, a revolutionary form of computing which uses qubits of information (instead of bits). These qubits can exist not just as ones and zeros, but use the properties of quantum systems. NASA researchers are using these systems to investigate areas where quantum algorithms might someday dramatically improve the agency's ability to solve difficult optimization problems in aeronautics, Earth and space sciences, and space exploration. With quantum computing frameworks getting better every day what innovative applications can you think of?