scientists
November 5, 2013 in the direction of Mars launched a rocket. This was India’s first interplanetary mission, Mangalian, and it was very risky. Only 40% of all missions sent by major organizations to Mars – the US, Russia, Japan, China – were crowned with success. None of the space organizations has been able to achieve success from the first time [тут автор ошиблась: ЕКА успешно отправило миссию “Марс-экспресс” с помощью российских ракет в 2003 году – прим. перев.]. The Indian space research organization ISRO could not boast of a large budget: the NASA Maven’s Mars probe cost $ 651 million, and the budget of the Indian mission was $ 74 million. In comparison, the budget of the film “Martian” was $ 108 million. In addition, ISRO sent its rocket only 18 months after the start of work on it.
Several months and millions of kilometers later, the orbital ship prepared to enter the orbit of Mars. It was a critical moment. If the ship did not exit at the wrong angle, if the error was only one degree, it would either have crashed on the surface of Mars or flew past it, and would have been lost in space.
At this time on Earth the team of scientists And engineers waited for the signal from the ship. The mission’s developer, Ritu Karidhal, has been working for 48 hours in a row, fed by the expectation of the result. The child Minal Rohit watched reports on space missions on TV. Now Minal was waiting for news from the orbiting ship, which she developed with her colleague, Mumita Dutta.
When the signal came, the flight control room burst into cheers. Working in such a room, as Deputy Operations Director Nandini Harinat says, “you already can not look at thrillers in search of excitement. It will be present in your daily work. ”
It was the success of not only the mission. Photo celebrating the success of scientists in the flight control room has become viral. Girls in India and abroad have acquired new heroines: they wear saris, flowers in their hair, and launch rockets into space.
The rocket will fly away, and no one will wait
When Mumita Dutta studied in the ninth grade, she was carried away by the properties of light. This obsession led her to the path of an engineer. While in the eastern city of Calcutta [с 2001 года официальное название — Ко́лката / прим. перев.] in 2006, she read in the newspaper that India was going to launch its first lunar mission. It was a chance to recoup the opportunity missed half a century ago. ISRO founded in the late 60’s, on the wave of space race. But the space organization in the country that recently gained independence had very few resources, and the agency was not able to take part in the flights to the moon. The Indian lunar mission of 2008 was prepared long ago, and it became a turning point. “I thought that the people who worked on it were very lucky.” Mumita declined the offer to take postgraduate studies abroad and moved to another part of the country to join the ISRO to work on the lunar mission.
When ISRO made the announcement of the Martian mission in 2012, its main goal was to enter the orbit of Mars and conduct scientific Experiments. The mission, given the limited resources, was to be ready in record time. The rocket had to be launched at a time when the distance between Earth and Mars was the smallest, in mid-2013. Only 18 months were spent on planning, construction and testing of all equipment. The orbital ship was to enter the elliptical orbit around Mars from behind the planet, which made it impossible for the Earth to communicate with the Earth at the most critical moments of the mission. This required the development of a fully autonomous system. The ship could accommodate 5 sensors for scientific experiments. The dirty trick was that their total weight should not exceed 15 kg.
Mumita knew the sensors. She was tasked to develop and test the first and unique instrument for detecting methane on Mars.
It turned out that the sensor over which Mumita worked was in the yard. In 2014, the Martian all-terrain vehicle from NASA, Curiosity, found a sharp increase in methane concentration in its location. Because the presence of methane could be a sign of life or water on Mars, it was an exciting discovery. But to build meaningful conclusions, a scientific tool was needed, capable of detecting even a small amount of methane anywhere on the surface of Mars, while working for several seasons and even years in a row. The search for hints among the collected data of Mumita compares with “the search for God – of course, in this case, our scientific goal is the role of God.”
Sensor sensitivity requirements determined its design. Before working on this mission, Mumita had already developed more than ten payload devices for spacecraft, but this case was different from the previous ones. “We developed something that no one had ever done before, so every day a new challenge arose,” she says.
Mumita and colleagues decided that to record such subtle measurements it is necessary to select an optical filter that has never been used before In interplanetary missions: a Fabry-Perot resonator. It was not tested under these conditions, but it was sensitive enough to detect even a small amount of methane, and light enough that the final sensor could weigh no more than 3 kg. Mumita thought out the concept, developed and conducted resonator tests. Because of the importance of this experiment, the chairman of the board and the director of ISRO attended the meeting.
Under the looks of the bosses, Mumita, worried, began a test run. “I put the resonator in a test setup, burning with a desire to know if it will give us all the necessary characteristics,” she says. She inserted a cell with methane between the resonator and parallel rays of light. The resonator signal has changed. “When I saw this, I thought:” That’s it! “, And could not restrain emotions. We actually built a device capable of detecting methane. We knew this would work! ”
The Sensor was to fly to Mars, and he appeared thanks to Mumite. It only remained to live a few months, consisting of 18-hour working days, to ensure the successful launch of the mission, given its unrealistically optimistic schedule. But the time frame for Mumit was not embarrassed.
“Yes, we worked a lot,” she says, “but when I think that I’m working on a sensor that will benefit my fellow citizens, I feel that it’s worth it ”
” Fantasy will become a reality, but you will not know about it “
India is a country of contrasts. There is India with a growing economy, there is India with a huge income gap. In one India, girls can grow up and become developers of spacecraft, the other does not provide them with the right to education and security. One India follows the shortest trajectory to Mars, the other remains inaccessible due to bad roads.
Minal Rohit grew up in the 80s in the small town of Rajkot [как это по-индийски – называть агломерацию с населением более 1,28 млн «небольшим городком» – прим. перев.]and somehow she saw the launch of a satellite on TV. She was so impressed that she thought: “kaam karna hai toh aisa karna hai”. If you need to do the work, do it.
If an Indian woman cares about career goals, then Indian culture may seem to her limited, and her aspirations – rebellious. But Minal’s parents did not allow this culture to rule in their home. When someone advised her not to continue training, as she “will not be able to find a suitable couple for marriage,” her father did not want to hear anything about it. “My father was hard,” she says. He said: “She will find herself a pair if she is not helped, but she will continue to study.” In Rajkot, the choice of an engineer profession at that time was unusual, especially for women, and Minal decided that she would be more suitable for medical education. Her parents transferred her from school with Gujarati instruction in English. When she did not pass the exams for admission to the medical institute, they supported her attempts to enter engineering. It was about this that she dreamed from her childhood.
The Minal began working in ISRO with providing medical and educational services in rural areas of India through the agency’s communication satellites – in those places such services are vital Thousands of people are needed. She was lucky that in her work she was supported by both parents and husband. But her passion for the cosmos remained unsatisfied. “Life is a piece of comfort, and in my work I constantly have to look for ways out of the comfort zone,” she says. Otherwise, “fantasy will become a reality, and you will not know about it.”
The mission to Mars was perhaps the most serious way out of the comfort zone.
An incredibly tight time frame required innovation. The usual mission is like a baton. Auxiliary teams, such as the Mumita team, build their devices and pass them on to the system integration team. It already cares about that all subsystems – optics, electronics, mechanics – worked harmoniously together and met the criteria of working capacity. Then this system is passed on to be integrated into the qualification model of the orbiter, which is being thoroughly tested. The final result, the ship, becomes a copy of this model.
“One can imagine this system as a family with the eldest and youngest son,” says Minal. – The younger receives all attention, and the senior suffers all difficulties. If the elder passes all strict tests, then the younger one will also pass. Usually the flight model is considered after the completion of work on the qualification. ”
But with the Martian mission it was not like that, she did not have time to hold the relay race. The process was more like juggling. “The qualification and flight models were built in parallel,” Minal says.
Her task was to help integrate methane sensor components into a complex scientific tool. Usually all this work would be conducted with a qualification model, and with a margin for an error that could be corrected in the final, flight model. But since the processes were superimposed on each other, there was no margin for error.
“The cosmos of mistakes does not forgive,” she says. “We call it a zero defect.” So, when at the last stage the tools went to check in the framework of the qualifying and flight model, recalls Minal, “we were overwhelmed with tremendous responsibility. It was impossible to make mistakes anywhere, not in one of the wire connections. I would say that it required even more patience than I show by raising my son. ”
Minal carefully developed plans and procedures for integrating the subsystem of the methane sensor. Usually, when the subsystems come to the Minal laboratory, they are pre-tested and certified beforehand. In this mission, as she recalls, “the teams dealing with the subsystems were still testing them. We had to believe them on their word, without documents and certificates; The engineer simply said: “Okay, I tested everything, now it’s your turn.” And that’s it! “She adds, laughing. “I prayed that when I pressed the button, it would turn on and not explode!”
There were no explosions. The orbital ship was preparing to launch into space.
“I looked into the darkness and thought about what was behind it”
The average distance between Earth and Mars is 225 million km. This means that the signal from the orbiter ship reaches the control center in 12 minutes. 12 painful minutes before you can find out that something has gone wrong, and another 12 endless minutes for your team to correct the error reached the ship. If your ship is on its way to destruction, this 24-minute gap can be deadly to him.
Therefore, a Martian ship should be able to work autonomously. With each subsequent mission, the ISRO team is building up its capabilities. The moon mission of 2007 allowed her to work out the overcoming of the Earth’s gravity. The mission to Mars has added automatic software, quite complex, to recognize and correct any error that may arise in space.
The mission’s developer, Ritu Karidhal, ran the development and design of the system. “She looks like a human brain. It receives signals from sensors reminiscent of your eyes, ears, nerve endings. If somewhere in the body there is a problem, your brain reacts instantly. This is the device for the ship we had to create from scratch in ten months. We had to take in turn each element – sensors, activators, motors – and understand how it can behave incorrectly. ”
When Rita first became interested in the cosmos, she did not think that her work would be so high-tech. But then she was only three years old. “I used to ask why the moon is growing and decreasing. I looked into the darkness and thought about what was behind it, – Rita remembers. – I thought that the science of space is astronomy, watching the stars. In fact, everything is very technological. ”
Nineteen years ago, Ritu left her hometown of Lucknow and moved across the country to become a scientist. “It was not an easy decision, but my parents always supported me,” she says.
On the day of launch in November 2013, these dreams became a reality when Ritu watched the monitors in the mission control room.
Nandini Harinat, deputy director of the operations department, was with her in the autonomous system.
Nandini did not have any definite moment that gave rise to her interest in science. “My mother was a teacher of mathematics, and my father adores physics. In my life, science has always been, “she says. Mathematics was so often discussed in the house that Nandini believes that she met her earlier than she learned to speak. Together with his father, they studied the constellation until she learned to recognize the different stars in the night sky of Bangalore. “Of course, I never imagined that I will work in ISRO, but it just happened 21 years ago.”
In the project Mangalian, Nandini was engaged in mathematical calculations of the trajectory of the flight to Mars.
The time of the launches, as Nandini says, “I always had butterflies in my stomach.” After the launch of the orbital ship, the team had to conduct a series of mission-critical operations so that it could break free from the Earth’s gravity and go to Mars. Nandini describes them as “operations with one attempt. Either you do everything right, or not. ” The ship followed a predetermined course, several times turned around the Earth, starting engines on each revolution, and finally, gained enough speed to leave the sphere of gravity of the Earth exactly at the right angle and head towards the red planet. The first phase of the mission was completed on this
Nine months later, the orbital ship was ready to enter the orbit of Mars.
During this time, Nandini worked at the control center to make sure that the probe was on Planned trajectory, which she helped to plan and calculate. If the capsule deviated from it, the team had the necessary funds to return to the course. While Nandini was poring over the Martian mission, her daughter was taking school final exams. Nandini returned from the control center to midnight, and then woke up at 4 am to deal with her daughter.
By September 24, 2014, there were no options for adjustment: it was time for Mangalian to manage independently using the system in Which was developed by Ritu. At 7 am on that day, the ship sent a signal confirming the launch of the on-board sequencer. He was ready to enter the orbit of Mars. The ship orientated with the help of activators and entered the entry position at the right angle with an error of up to one degree.
After 21 minutes, as planned, the engines started. Four minutes later, the signal ceased to go – the ship disappeared behind Mars. In the event of entering the orbit at the right angle, he would send a signal to Earth. Otherwise, there would be no signals from him anymore.
“Every minute,” recalls Rita, “we tracked the data, trying to calculate whether there was any anomaly in them.” But, of course, it was already impossible to influence the course of the mission. In the next 26 minutes, the teams of Ritu and Nandini were waiting in grave silence while in the flight control room.
Then, at 8 am, a signal came to Earth. And the world saw the celebration not only of Indian science, but also of amazing women who were in its center.
“Throughout the world, half of the mind is contained in women”
Astrophysicist Vera Rubin, who discovered dark matter, is known for her three assumptions about women in science:
1. Science has no problems that a man could solve, and a woman could not decide.
2. Throughout the world, half of the mind is contained in women.
3. Всем нужно разрешение на занятия наукой, но по историческим причинам это разрешение чаще дают мужчинам, чем женщинам.
Нандини с грустью соглашается, что в случае большинства женщин её страны это до сих пор так. «Возможно, дело в нашей культуре, – говорит она. – Она так сильно давит на женщину, что даже если у неё есть амбиции и талант, она не может их реализовать без полной поддержки дома».
Но женщины из ISRO, возможно, повлияли на ситуацию. Они относят появившиеся у них возможности на счёт поддержки, оказанной им в их семьях. Статистика Индийского космического агентства показывает, что за ними следуют и другие. Сегодня, по словам Мумиты, «количество женщин, занимающихся в сфере науки о космосе в ISRO, просто взлетело как ракета. Это показывает, что женщины, выбирающие эту сферу деятельности, получают больше поддержки».
Действительно, сегодня почти четверть технических специалистов ISRO составляют женщины. Многого ещё предстоит достичь, но космические миссии настолько сложны, что активно работать должны все. Если вы стремитесь к звёздам, нельзя строить стеклянный потолок между Землёй и космосом.
Эти мысли запускают орбитальные корабли в космос, а учёных выводят на сцену. Цикл может продолжаться – идёт эстафетная гонка, чьё время пришло – когда юные девочки видят сари в центре управления и понимают, что и сами могут туда попасть.
«Если у вас есть сильное желание, оно исполнится, так или иначе», – говорит Минал Рохит, чей датчик продолжает измерять содержание метана на Марсе. «Я всегда говорю, работайте с краткосрочными целями, чтобы у вас была мотивация на их достижение. А где-то в глубине мозга может быть и основная жизненная цель, заявление о том, чего вы хотите достичь. Одна большая мечта и много маленьких».
«Помогать обычным людям – это моя большая мечта, – говорит она, – а Марс был маленькой. Теперь я думаю: что же дальше?»
Небо уже не преграда.
