THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In its attempt to contribute to the path-breaking innovations in space technology , Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) here, is developing payloads for the upcoming Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) -2, astronomical satellite and for the proposed Venus orbiter mission (VOM) of ISRO. It also marks the development of IIST over the past 11 years since its inception in 2007 at Valiamala here.

These payloads for the future space missions of ISRO are being developed by IIST at its new centre `Small-Satellite Systems and Payload Centre’ (SSPACE). This new centre is being established to encourage the students, faculty members and staff of IIST for taking up interdisciplinary activities related to spacecraft engineering and space science, IIST director Dr VK Dadhwal said.

“Currently this group is developing a payload, an ionospheric plasma probe named ARIS, a `Retarding Potential Analyser’ (RPA) for the upcoming Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM)-2 of ISRO. Applied Radio-frequency Ion Source (ARIS) is to detect the ionised particles in the Martian atmosphere and it is a space qualified model for the MOM-2 probe. The engineering model and high vacuum test has been successfully completed in last eight months,” IIST director Dr VK Dadhwal told TOI on Wednesday.

IIST has also proposed a nanosatellite and an RPA payload for the Venus orbiter mission of ISRO which is under discussion, he said. On the payload for ISRO’s future astronomical satellite, IIST has submitted a proposal. “We have submitted a proposal to develop a payload, an astronomical telescope for future astronomy exploration to study the exoplanets,” he said.

In addition, now IIST has initiated three international collaborative student satellite projects, of which two are under advanced stage of development and one under discussion. The `Autonomous Assembly of Reconfigurable Space Telescope’ (AAReST) project is being developed in participation with US-based Caltech University and Jet Propulsion Lab and with UK based University of Surrey . IIST’s responsibility is to develop one MirrorSat including the structures, propulsion system, analogue-to-digital convertor and power system. As a first milestone, IIST has delivered the mass dummies for the IIST MirrorSat for vibration analysis to Caltech, USA.

Then, the US based University of Colorado’s Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) had invited IIST to participate in the `International Satellite Program in Research and Education’ (INSPIRE) program. The first satellite under this program is the InspireSat-1 carrying "compact ionospheric payload" (CIP). As part of its responsibility to build the Command and Data Handling (C&DH) system and the flight software for this project, IIST has delivered the engineering model of the C&DH system and work on flight software is under progress at LASP where currently four IIST students are undergoing their internship.

With UK based University of Cambridge, IIST has jointly designed a future space telescope to study atmosphere of exoplanets. These developments have been submitted to various committees of ISRO and Advisory Committee of Space Research. This year IIST has also signed two more MoUs, one with Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, and Technion Israel, to carry out research and development in space science and spacecraft engineering through student and faculty exchanges.

