Girl power touches a new high with WESAT

When the satellite made by the students of Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Technology for Women (LBSITW) trundles into outer space in a few days’ time, it will be a trailblazer in more than one way.

The satellite, named WESAT, has already hogged the headlines as the first satellite project conceived, designed, and executed by an all-women team. But more than this novelty factor, WESAT can boast of some significant scientific innovations too.

If things go according to plan, WESAT will be carried into space by the PSLV rocket of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on January 1, and it will study the effect of ultraviolet rays and solar irradiance on our upper atmosphere.

Overexposure to UV radiation can have harmful effects on human health, but there have been very few studies in India on this. Moreover, global studies of UV radiation until now have been based on sunlight data derived from multispectral measurements – meaning UV ray measurements are deduced through mathematical calculations, which increases the possibility of error. What WESAT will do is provide data based solely on UV ray measurements.

At a function held at LBS recently to unveil the satellite model, the secretary of the Kerala State Disaster Management Authority, Dr Sekhar Lukose Kuriakose, hinted that this could well be the first space project in the world that focuses solely on UV ray data collection.

“We haven’t been able to confirm this, but we do know that all publicly available data on UV rays are derived from multispectral measurements,” says WESAT project coordinator Professor Lizy Abraham.

There is an even more exciting innovation that WESAT is implementing when it comes to energy usage, underpinning the idea that necessity is the mother of all innovations.

Initially, the team had planned to use a battery to power the satellite. However, that required converters and high-quality components, adding another budgetary burden. So, they adopted an innovative way to overcome this. 

“UV rays come from sunlight. When the light is transformed into electrical energy through photovoltaic diodes, we plan to determine the intensity of the ultraviolet radiation by measuring the power density,” explained Lizy Abraham.

Such a self-powering method could be a model for future space mission projects.

The round shape of WESAT itself is unconventional, and the team behind it is now exploring the possibility of obtaining a patent for it.

As with any complex project, the start of this satellite mission began almost five years ago when then-students like Gopika, Grace, and Ajina began dreaming about sending up a satellite as a student project. They formed a Space Club and even managed to enlist some ISRO experts to come and speak to the group.

However, such efforts hardly helped, as the highbrow scientific tips these scientists provided went over the heads of these rookie students, who were fuelled by nothing but enthusiasm. Another major hurdle was the time factor, as such missions required periods longer than the four years that students have on campus.

But they refused to give up and soon found an ally in Professor Lizy Abraham, whose PhD thesis had involved satellite imagery.

“We had completed the course and were leaving the campus. But we didn't want to give up on the dream of sending up a satellite. So, we entrusted the baton to Lizy Madam,” says Gopika who joined Wipro after graduation and is now pursuing a civil service career.

Lizy Abraham started organising brainstorming sessions with students every week to evolve ideas about what could be done. Enthusiasm was never in short supply, with Space Club members of the next batch like Reshma, Dhuma, and Aiswarya starting to pitch ideas, says the professor in the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering.

Their aim was to have a satellite project that was different from others, something that students could do without outside help and within a budget they could afford. Initial plans, such as monitoring deforestation, fell by the wayside as the scope and budget were too large.

“Then it dawned on us that the study of UV rays fit our bill,” says Lizy Abraham.

Still, it involved a lot of study and research, and the students spent long hours collecting the data needed for the project. Lizy Abraham says that it was one of the painstaking jobs that students of earlier batches did, as it is devoid of the excitement of a space project and involved the drudgery of going through resources from every corner of the globe.

The Covid lockdown provided some help as most academic projects came to a halt, giving Space Club members more time to work on UV study research.

By then, students like Sruthy, Athira, Kausalya, and Madhuri had started their degrees and they dove headlong into it.

As restrictions eased a little by 2020, the students began visiting Lizy Abraham at her home, and the work started taking concrete shape. Soon, groups were formed for specific tasks like methodology, research, and inferences, leading to a pretty comprehensive document in the end.

“Later, space science experts told us that the work we did for that paper impressed them, and that is when they started taking our application seriously,” says Lizy Abraham.

Finally, the Memorandum of Understanding with ISRO was signed by early 2023, giving the team another challenge as the launch date was just a few months away.

The first task was to set up a ground monitoring station at the LBSITW campus and present the results to the space agency to confirm they could physically achieve what they had outlined in their paper.

Once that was achieved, the task of building a similar model for placement in space began, this time with all the high-end quality needed for a space mission.

As any project manager can tell you, the home stretch is the most intense phase, and the current WESAT team was tasked with that.

The team, led by student coordinators Devika DK, Surya Jayakumar, Anupallavi SP, and Sheril Mariam, plunged into it with gusto, and their toil went well past the midnight hours on some days. One hackathon they held stretched over 24 hours as the young minds, shepherded by the faculty members Dr Reshmi R and Dr Sumithra MD, put things in place for their historic mission.

Along the way they were helped by ISRO experts, who backed them enthusiastically while the local fabrication companies were generous with their time.

There was plenty of encouragement from their fellow students and faculty members at LBSITW. Even departments like civil engineering joined the excitement by designing and erecting a models of the WESAT and PSLV rocket at the campus entrance.

As the satellite started its journey to the Sriharikotta launch site on Monday, the WESAT team was brimming with excitement, along with a sense of trepidation that comes with such space missions.

So far, this mission has progressed like a multi-stage rocket launch, with each batch of students delivering the thrust needed to propel the mission forward. 

It is now on its home stretch, and the deployment of the satellite would mark a memorable feat, hopefully inspiring a new generation of women scientists.

GenRobotics wins Gamechanger Award

Trivandrum-based Genrobotics has received another feather in its cap after its G Gaiter robot was picked as an "AI Gamechanger" at the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) Summit 2023 held in New Delhi recently. The AI-powered robot trains people who have lost mobility due to stroke, spinal injury, and similar conditions to recover with minimal dependency on others.

Apart from the health sector, areas like hoteliering and home care are also seeing explosive growth in the use of robots across the world. While the increased demand offers great opportunities, China has raced ahead on this front, cornering a significant market share. A recent report in Kr-Asia details the chokehold the country has on the robotics markets in Asia, North America, Europe, and the Middle East. But as concerns about data privacy and other security issues rise, robotic firms in other countries like India may get some openings if they are smart enough.

Another AI model for the Indian market

In another exciting development for India, Bhavish Aggarwal, the founder of Ola, has entered the race to build an artificial intelligence model tailored for the country. Large Language Models are emerging worldwide, but the majority are trained with data in English. Aggarwal claims that the model his company is developing, named Krutrim, can surpass GPT-4 in Indic language performance. It is "equipped with voice capabilities and can provide distinctive responses that reflect a nuanced understanding of the Indian ethos." Krutrim can comprehend 22 Indian languages and generate content in about 10, including Marathi, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Odia, Gujarati, and Malayalam, according to a report in Your Story.

Railways unveils a jumbo safety plan

Indian Railways is implementing an Intrusion Detection System on rail lines running through forest areas to prevent accidents involving elephants. In the past decade alone, around 200 elephants have been killed in accidents on rail lines. Now, authorities are introducing an alert system called Gajaraj Suraksha, incorporating AI-based technology and a network of optical fibre cables with the help of startups. The system will send alerts to train drivers and nearby monitoring stations when elephants are in danger areas. According to India’s national AI portal, this system will be implemented in forest areas in Assam, West Bengal, Odisha, Kerala, Jharkhand, and some parts of Chhattisgarh and Tamil Nadu.

Cheers to the breed for wine tasters

It is the season of cakes and wine, and a group of Swiss scientists has embraced the spirit of the season by training an artificial intelligence platform to recognize the chemical signatures of different wines. Wine tasting, until now, involved taking a sip, twirling it in your mouth, and letting sophisticated palates determine the bouquet of flavours and taste. Some sceptics consider it an overrated method and snobbery, but the Swiss researchers claim that their program can identify the year and estate of the wines through their chemical formulations. It could even pinpoint which side of the Garonne River near Bordeaux these wines originated from, as one researcher tells New Scientist. So, don't dismiss wine tasters with a 'Bah humbug' just yet.