SIVAKASI WEATHER
Mission Mars Possible, Sivakasian lads to Tell NASA

13-05-2014
13th May 2014

Courtesy: The New Indian Express

Mission Mars Possible, Sivakasian lads to Tell NASA

Eight students of Sri Venkateswara College of Engineering in Chennai will visit the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to present a project on developing a "flyby" machine that will make possible the "mission to Mars with human beings" in 2018.

The students, who submitted a 50-page project on March 15, were selected and will present their project to NASAs mass convention on August 9.

Speaking about the project at a function organised by the Virudhunagar Rotary Club on Sunday, S Vishnuram Barath of Sivakasi, a third-year mechanical engineering student, said that United States-based Inspiration Mars, which had sent a project on flyby machine and rejected by NASA, announced an online global competition in September 2013 inviting a 50-page project on "mission to Mars with humans possible" that had to be submitted by March 15, 2014.

He said that he, along with V Vishal, Vijul L Shah, Anand Sundarajan, Mohit R Tagore, S Vishwanath, V Sathya Subramanian and S B Vishnu Kothar of the college, had studied the project for about two months and then came out with an idea for the mission.

Elaborating on the project, Vishnuram said that the machine would go around the surface of Mars by using its gravity and after completing a circle, the machine would come back to Earth by using its gravitational force. This is called a natural flyby machine, which would take 510 days to reach Earth after completing its mission.

“In our project, we suggested a method to reduce the number of days for the mission by converting the elliptical path to the hyperbolic path powered by the flyby, which is our main concept. In this process, the machine would be pushed into the space and be switched on once it reaches the space and would use its fuel to accelerate so the number of days could be reduced. By using the powered flyby concept, a total of 70 days of the mission can be reduced and the whole process can be completed in 431 days,” Vishnuram explained.

“When there are humans inside the machine, there is a possibility for them to get cancer by Sun-s radiation, and considering the safety of the humans in the machine, we suggested this method. Moreover, the cost of food and clothing would come down and the space for them can be used to have other equipment in the machine,” he said.


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