IIT-Bombay bags ‘Chandrayaan honour’ for Moon landing.

IIT Bombay has been bestowed the ‘Chandrayaan 3’ honour to recognise its contribution to the Chandrayaan 3 mission. Prasanna Gandhi received the award on behalf of IIT Bombay from Pawan Goenka, Chairman of the National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe), in the presence of JD Patil, Chairman of the Indian Space Association (ISPA), and Lt Gen A K Bhat (Retd), Director General of ISPA.

The specific innovation for which the award was given was the development of the technology that allows for the precise prediction of how the vehicle would be influenced by the sloshing around of propellant within the tanks. Gandhi along with Ananthkrishnan began working on the 2DOF pilot slosh rig in 2003, completing its development around 2007. The rig can be used to characterise the slosh disturbance of liquid fuel tanks used in a variety of rocket engines.

ISRO’s Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC) developed a version of the rig that has been used since 2011, allowing engineers to accurately estimate how slosh influences various launch vehicle propellant tanks, as well as the Vikram landers for Chandrayaan 2 and 3. The rig was extensively used to iteratively develop the Vikram lander used in the Chandrayaan 3 mission.