Ready for Take off

The Chinese did a spacewalk for the first time in their history even as they prepare to build an orbiting station in the next few years. On the other hand, India’s lunar mission took off with Chandrayaan being snugly placed into the moon’s orbit to survey over the next two years, its landscape complete with craters, chemical compositions and underlying materials. Closer home, a group of students at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay have undertaken to build the institute’s first fully functional satellite that will be launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). An entirely student initiative, this micro satellite will be 18*18*23 cms weighing less than 10 kg involving intense miniaturization and will “spread awareness among the student community about this exciting field” apart from delivering the payloads of course.The writing on the wall is clear. The excitement in the field of aerospace science and technology is palpable as country after country charts out its respective, ambitious space programme and steps into planetary exploration to discover the unknown a bit more. The boom in the aviation industry and resulting opportunities, the successes achieved in the national projects such as the LCA, ALH and the missile programs (IGMDP) as well as exciting new space missions such as the RLV and Chandrayaan hold promise of resurgence,” opines Prof. P. M. Mujumdar, HOD, Aerospace Engineering at IIT-Bombay.To get started, you need not be from the space discipline at all. In fact, says senior scientist and member of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Roddam Narasimha, “Almost every discipline would contribute directly to aerospace.” So mechanical engineers would be engaged in design and structures, chemical engineers for propellants, electrical engineers for control systems, computer science engineers to process data and so on. Of course, there would also be a component of people who are from the aeronautical and aerospace background.A typical 4-year programme in aerospace engineering would involve mastering the areas of fluid mechanics, thermal sciences and propulsion, solid mechanics and structures, flight dynamics and control.“The undergraduate program is very demanding where an undergraduate aerospace engineering student takes around fifty courses in various fields of Engineering, sciences and humanities and round off with a two semester project in their final year,” says Professor S. Kamle, HOD at the Aerospace Department, IIT-Kanpur. Aerospace is also an area where one has to get things right at the first time.“It requires a disciplined outlook wherein a professional must be constantly aware of the strong coupling between the subdisciplines of the field and the influence of mutual interactions on the total system,” explains Prof. Mujumdar. To cater to the specific human resource needs of the aerospace industry, the Department of Space has recently set up an Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) in Trivandrum. The institute offers undergraduate B.Tech programme in Avionics, Aerospace Engineering and a five-year integrated masters in Applied Sciences in addition to a post graduate programme and a post doctoral programme. If you have been placed in the extended list of IITJEE 2008 you are eligible to apply.Since the numbers passing out of aerospace related programmes are limited, getting placed is not an issue. Prof Kamle explains that jobs essentially fall in two categories: the core areas and those in software pertaining to aerospace and aviation. You could be placed with the aviation industry engaged in manufacturing and maintenance of airlines or be working with regulatory authorities. R&D with companies like GE, Infotech, L&T, Godrej, Airbus, Renault Nissan, NAL, HAL and DRDO is another big area.