E20 new star in the sky

When it lifted off from Sriharikota on India’s 100th space mission earlier this month, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle had on board a special 15-kg passenger. The PSLV’s secondary payload, this satellite was Indian private entrepreneurship’s first ever space mission.

When the Japanese microsatellite named PROITERES, or Project of Osaka Institute of Technology Electric Rocket Engine onboard Small Spaceship, was put into orbit on September 9, the biggest cheer went up at Earth2Orbit or E2O, the country’s first private space start-up that offers advisory services to clients seeking satellite launch opportunities onboard the PSLV rocket. With offices in Mumbai, Bangalore and some presence in San Francisco, Vienna and Osaka, E2O works closely with the Indian Space Research Organisation’s marketing arm ANTRIX.

Its first space mission taking off after four years in gestation, the milestone is indeed a big one for E2O which has had to grapple with complex business, contractual, cultural, technical and logistical aspects of a satellite launch that sometimes got lost in translation in dealing with foreign clients. “The successful launch has established our credibility as a formidable business associate of Antrix to reach out to diverse geographies,” says Dr Susmita Mohanty, founder and CEO of E2O.

The 40-year-old Mohanty is an Arthur C Clarke protégée with degrees in electrical engineering, industrial design, a Master’s in Space Studies from the International Space University in Strasbourg and a PhD in space architecture.

She frequently addresses schoolchildren, speaking as passionately about careers in designing futuristic space suits and lunar rovers as about commercial human spaceflight and moonwalks.

The small satellite that was E2O’s first delivery into space is also part of some cutting edge research at the Osaka Institute of Technology. Principal investigator for the PROITERES project professor Hirokazu Tahara at the university’s Department of Mechanical Engineering says the mission is special because the satellite was built by about 50 students of mechanics, electronics and robotics in OIT’s Faculty of Engineering over three years.

It is armed with a special lightweight camera to provide high-resolution photographs of the Kansai district of Japan as seen from space. But what is exciting space researchers is the study on electrothermal pulsed plasma thrusters (PPT). “The propellant being used is Teflon; that is a solid material, not liquid,” says professor Tahara. The Teflon is heated and evaporated by a pulsed electric discharge and the produced high-pressure and high-temperature gas is exhausted through a nozzle, generating the required thrust for the flight. “Therefore, liquid tanks, valves and heaters are not needed,” Tahara continues. This, alongside the simple structure and light weight, could render PPT a preferable propulsion system for nano/small satellites.

Meanwhile, Mohanty says E2O has a handful of other international clients in the pipeline, and not just for small satellites as secondary payload. Calling the PSLV one of the most reliable launch vehicles worldwide, Mohanty says it could become the most sought after rocket in its genre. “For that, we need to convince the government that we need four to six PSLV launches a year, not just two,” she adds.