Specialisation:

Control Engineering, Human Spaceflight

Major Professional Contributions:

· As  the first Director of the Directorate of Human Space Programme, ISRO , took the lead role in defining the way forward for  Indian human spaceflight. This involved drawing up of the blueprint for the Indian Human Space Program, and enabling materialization of India’s maiden human spaceflight endeavour, Gaganyaan,  the establishment of a Human Spaceflight Centre, shaping the baseline project report for Gaganyaan, identification of and interfacing with the national stakeholders and international collaborators for Gaganyaan, and putting collaboration mechanisms in place.

·   Facilitated selection of Indian Astronaut trainees, as well as the training of the astronaut trainees and the flight surgeons at facilities within the country and abroad, and the development of human centric products

· As Deputy Director, VSSC, had  led the Control, Guidance and Simulation Entity to meet the challenges in system  modelling, guidance, control,  and simulations of ISRO launch vehicle missions. Some of the major contributions in this domain are:

 · Designed the autopilot for PSLV, GSLV and GSLV MkIII, and later led the team for development of guidance and autopilot systems, flight software, and validation of Navigation, Guidance and Control(NGC) systems for all ISRO ascent and re-entry missions. These robust designs are being successfully flown.

·  Played a major role in conceptualization and operationalization of day of launch wind biasing, enabling all-season launch for ISRO launch vehicles.

• ·  Instrumental in devising innovative mission management strategy and robust guidance system design of India’s first winged reentry vehicle RLV-TD with unique ascent/descent configuration.

  ·For ISRO’s prestigious Mars Orbiter Mission,  steered the team to manage mission design challenges while optimizing the design and validation cycle.

  ·For long duration missions with upper stage in orbit, innovative design strategies have culminated in versatile missions injecting multiple satellites in different orbits.

  ·Enabled expansion of the integrated simulation facility of VSSC into a world class facility with  new test beds including the iron bird for actuator-in-loop simulation.

  ·Developed and copyrighted the real time simulation software RSITARA for re-entry mission end to end simulations.

  ·Responsible for automation of Autopilot Design, NGC simulations and analysis to streamline design and validation cycle, and design of test strategies and test cases to bring out system deficiencies during ground testing itself

Consultancy Areas:

Launch vehicle System modelling

Control design

Mission simulations

Human spaceflight

Sector Associated With:

Aerospace, especially launch vehicles

Sectors Interested to Offer Service:

Systems modelling and control

Professional Experience

Thirty years of experience in various aspects of launch vehicle navigation, guidance and control, including modelling, algorithm development, design, and in leading large teams for ground and flight software development, extensive mission studies validation and end to end ground testing using flight actuators, sensors, on board processors and flight software

For the  Indian Human space program, identified and brought together the national expertise in the various new areas,  put in place collaborative mechanisms both at the National and International level, and enabled crew selection and training as well as the development of human centric products in addition to the technical challenges involved in the launch vehicle and crew module.

As Chairman and member of major technical review committees over the years, has ensured all technical issues are appropriately addressed and played a major role in the success of ISROs launch vehicle missions

Keywords

Space transportation systems, control design, launch vehicle autopilot, simulations, human space flight