Faculty Publications
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Publications by NITK Faculty
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Item The LEO Archipelago: A system of earth-rings for communications, mass-transport to space, solar power, and control of global warming(2011) Meulenberg, A.; Karthik Balaji, P.S.Mans quest to get into space is hindered by major problems (e.g., system-development and capital costs, expense of putting mass into orbit, trapped-radiation belts, and environmental impact of a large increase in rocket launches). A multi-purpose low-earth-orbit system of rings circling the earth the LEO ARCHIPELAGOTM is proposed as a means of solving or bypassing many of them. A fiber-optic ring about the earth would be an initial testing and developmental stage for the Ring Systems, while providing cash-flow through a LEO-based, high-band-width, world-wide communication system. A low-earth-orbit-based space-elevator system, Sling-on-a-RingTM, is proposed as the crucial developmental stage of the LEO Archipelago. Being a LEO-based heavy-mass lifter, rather than earth- or GEO-based, it is much less massive and therefore less costly than other proposed space-elevators. With the advent of lower-cost, higher-mass transport to orbit, the options for further space development (e.g., space solar power, radiation, and space-debris dampers, sun shades, and permanent LEO habitation) are greatly expanded. This paper provides an update of the Sling-on-a-Ring concept in terms of new materials, potential applications, and trade-offs associated with an earlier model. The impact of Colossal Carbon Tubes, CCT, a new material with high tensile strength, extremely-low density, and other favorable properties, and other new technologies (e.g., solar-powered lasers, power beaming to near-space and earth, and thermal-control systems) on the development of associated LEO-Ring systems is also explored. The materials effect on the timeline for the system development indicates the feasibility of near-term implementation of the system (possibly within the decade). The Sling-on-a-Ring can provide a less-expensive, environment-friendly mode of access to space. This would pave the way (via eventual operation at >1000 t per day by 2050) for large scale development of space-based technologies. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Item Development of Multifunctional Thin Film Based X-Ray Intensity Filters for Space-Based Payloads(Springer New York LLC barbara.b.bertram@gsk.com, 2019) Prajwal, K.; Dey, A.; Sudhakar, M.; Nandi, A.; Esther, A.C.M.; Sridhara, N.; Yougandar, B.; Kumar, P.; Arya, S.; Rajendra, A.We report the development, thorough characterizations and space worthiness studies of multifunctional aluminized film as x-ray intensity filter for space-based payloads, suitably designed to place in Sun–Earth Lagrangian (L1) point. The L1 point is the ideal location for uninterrupted observation of Sun to study the solar flares in hard x-rays. For our specific purpose, we make use of two different types of x-ray detectors (e.g., CdTe and CZT) which are generally used for hard x-ray studies in the energy band of 5 to 200 keV. Further, these aforesaid two detectors require specified thermal control characteristic for optimal performance. Aluminization of Kapton films is proposed which would satisfy the thermo-optical and x-ray transmission requirements of the proposed payload. The developed aluminized films are thoroughly studied by field emission scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy techniques for micro-structural characteristic, x-ray diffraction for phase purity, nanoindentation for mechanical integrity at micro-structural length scale and spectrophotometer for thermo-optical properties. X-ray transmission test is carried out with two radioactive sources, namely 55Fe and 241Am, with various aluminized Kapton layer combinations. Finally, space worthiness of the aluminized Kapton films is examined by accelerated environments, e.g. humidity, thermal cycling and thermo-vacuum tests. © 2019, ASM International.Item Spatiotemporal Assessment of Satellite Image Time Series for Land Cover Classification Using Deep Learning Techniques: A Case Study of Reunion Island, France(MDPI, 2022) Navnath, N.N.; Chandrasekaran, K.; Stateczny, A.; Sundaram, V.M.; Prabhavathy, P.Current Earth observation systems generate massive amounts of satellite image time series to keep track of geographical areas over time to monitor and identify environmental and climate change. Efficiently analyzing such data remains an unresolved issue in remote sensing. In classifying land cover, utilizing SITS rather than one image might benefit differentiating across classes because of their varied temporal patterns. The aim was to forecast the land cover class of a group of pixels as a multi-class single-label classification problem given their time series gathered using satellite images. In this article, we exploit SITS to assess the capability of several spatial and temporal deep learning models with the proposed architecture. The models implemented are the bidirectional gated recurrent unit (GRU), temporal convolutional neural networks (TCNN), GRU + TCNN, attention on TCNN, and attention of GRU + TCNN. The proposed architecture integrates univariate, multivariate, and pixel coordinates for the Reunion Island’s landcover classification (LCC). the evaluation of the proposed architecture with deep neural networks on the test dataset determined that blending univariate and multivariate with a recurrent neural network and pixel coordinates achieved increased accuracy with higher F1 scores for each class label. The results suggest that the models also performed exceptionally well when executed in a partitioned manner for the LCC task compared to the temporal models. This study demonstrates that using deep learning approaches paired with spatiotemporal SITS data addresses the difficult task of cost-effectively classifying land cover, contributing to a sustainable environment. © 2022 by the authors.Item Orbit design for mitigating interstellar scattering effects in Earth-space very long baseline interferometry observations of Sagittarius A(EDP Sciences, 2025) Tamar, A.; Hudson, B.; Palumbo, D.The black hole Sagittarius A? (Sgr A?) is a prime target for next-generation Earth-space very long baseline interferometry missions such as the Black Hole Explorer (BHEX), which aims to probe baselines on the order of 20 G?. At these baselines, Sgr A? observations will be affected by the diffractive scattering effects from the interstellar medium (ISM). Therefore, we study how different parameter choices for turbulence in the ISM affect BHEX's observational capabilities to probe strong lensing features of Sgr A?. By using a simple geometric model of concentric Gaussian rings for Sgr A?'s photon ring signal and observing at 320 GHz, we find that the BHEX-ALMA baseline has the required sensitivity to observe Sgr A? for a broad range of values of the power-law index of density fluctuations in the ISM and the inner scale of turbulence. For other baselines with moderate sensitivities, a strong need for observations at shorter scales of 13.5 G? is identified. For this purpose, an orbit migration scheme is proposed. It is modeled using both chemical propulsion (CP)-based Hohmann transfers and electric propulsion (EP)-based orbit raising with the result that a CP-based transfer can be performed in a matter of hours, but with a significantly higher fuel requirement as compared to EP which, however, requires a transfer time of around 6 weeks. The consequences of these orbits for probing Sgr A?'s space-time are studied by quantifying the spatial resolution, temporal resolution, and angular sampling of the photon ring signal in the Fourier coverage of each of these orbits. We show that higher orbits isolate space-time features while sacrificing both signal lost to scattering and temporal resolution, but gaining greater access to the morphology of the photon ring. Thus, we find that orbits between the low Earth regime and the reference BHEX orbit can provide rich access to Sgr A?'s parameter space. © The Authors 2025.