The Indian Space Research Organization’s chief Dr.G.Madhavan Nair handed over his chair to the present chairman of the Vikarm Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Dr.K.Radhakrishnan.

60 year old Dr.Radhakrishnan today assumed office as the Chairman of the ISRO as well as Chairman, Space Commission and Secretary, Department of Space. Dr.Radhakrishnan is an avionics expert for about 35 years and hails from Irinjalakkuda in Thrissur district of Kerala. He joined ISRO in 1973 after completing his graduation as Electronics Engineer from the Kerala University. He later pursued his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore and Ph.D from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.

Posts held:

Dr.Radhakrishnan has held several posts such as Project Director for setting up Regional Remote-sensing Service Centres, Director of Budget and Economic Analysis for ISRO and Mission Director of Integrated Mission for Sustainable Development. He has had a short stint in the Ministry of Earth Sciences in 2004-2005 as the founder Director of Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) and first Project Director of Indian National Tsunami Warning System. From 2005 to 2008, he was Director, National Remote-Sensing Agency, Hyderabad, which has now been renamed National Remote-Sensing Centre (NRSC).

Address to the media:

After assuming charge this is what he had to say to the media gathering:

“It is with high hopes and great expectations that I am taking over this responsibility. It is a huge task that has been entrusted on me. I am confident that we will be able to achieve our goals with the dedicated work and support of the entire team of ISRO”

He also said, “A huge responsibility has been placed on me and at this moment I would like to thank all my gurus (teachers) and among them are Nair and other former ISRO chairmen like Kasturi Rangan and U.R. Rao,”

He also emphasized his immediate priority will be the successful flight of GSLV-D3 in December 2009 with an Indian cryogenic stage.

SpaceBoy Welcomes !!

SpaceBoy.in takes special pride in welcoming the new Chairman of ISRO Dr.Radhakrishnan and wishes all success to him and his team for all the hard work and perseverance in every project to make India a spear head in Space technology and also Salutes the outgoing Chairman Dr.G.Madhavan Nair for all his enduring support in making a daunting 25 successful missions Chandrayaan a great success ! You will be gratefully remembered by the Indian Space enthusiasts for making us all proud !

MAVs, short for Micro Aerial Vehicles, like these ones in the video from MIT’s Robust Robotic Group, a research wing of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, are a marvel in the robotics research which can fly without GPS through unmapped indoor environments, and Dude, this is no comic book super fantasy or Hollywood Sci-fi but exists in cemented reality !

These robots can be used for military as well as civil aerial reconnaissance, search and rescue operations, civil engineering inspections, and a multitude of tasks where in sending a human is difficult and dangerous. These MAVs have a high level of autonomous behavior in difficult terrains armed with an array of sensors working on a gamut of artificial intelligence algorithms.

With a little bit of googling one can easily find an array of these technologies that exist in paper and reality. Several types including the ones called Ornithopters (that has flapping wings) are bio-inspired and modelled by engineers by carefully involving the huge range of science and technology trends in decision-theoretic planning, statistical inference, and artificial intelligence.

The above is a research headed in the Robust Robotics Group which specializes in areas of Micro-Air Vehicle Navigation and Control and Human-Robot Interaction for Assistive Robots.

Guess what, TU Delft had earlier designed a micro sized 3 gram Ornithopter christened ‘DelFly‘ last year. The silver lining here is, it is the world’s smallest Ornithopter equipped with a camera !! Well I just remember my high school Principal’s golden words - Tomorrow the world will be dealing with - more and more about less and less ! How true it is !

An interesting note: The Washington Post has referred to insect-like versions of MAVs as Robobugs ;)

NASA’s Next generation spacecraft and launch vehicle system, Ares I-X was launched successfully on a test flight yesterday from Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral in Florida. The test flight of this 100 m tall giant rocket was meant to be short lived for about two minutes, into the clear skies of florida skies amid much expectations, carrying hardware equipment and sensors that yielded data to determine the accuracy of trajectory and a gamut of other in flight characteristics.

The rocket soared high up about 46 kms and landed about 240 km from the launch pad with the help of parachute equipped with sensors tracking its trajectory. A whopping 700 sensors mounted on the vehicle provide flight test engineering data to correlate with computer models and analysis. Ares-I is the first step in the promise NASA is deemed to deliver as the  replacement of its ageing space-fleet shuttles, to keep its momentum in the space technology and its planned event of returning to the moon with astronauts in 2014.

“The most valuable learning is through experience and observation,” said Bob Ess, Ares I-X mission manager. “Tests such as this — from paper to flight — are vital in gaining a deeper understanding of the vehicle, from design to development.”