Team Aranea from PES University works on novel de-orbiting mechanism for Micro and Nano satellites in low and medium altitude Earth orbits (LEOs & MEOs) in the project called Ultra-thin Wires Drag Enhancement System (UWDES). Ten members of the team attended the International Astronautical Congress (IAC)-2017 held at Adelaide, Australia from Sept 25th to 29th. IAC is the largest annual space tech conference attended by scientists, industry and academia worldwide. The team presented a paper on the UWDES concept, titled “Drag Enhancement for Spacecraft using Numerous Ultra-Thin Wires Arranged into Drag-Wire Webs of Various Configurations”. Earlier, the project reached the Top 10 Innovations of the IIGP 2.0 (India Innovation Growth Programme) 2017, University Challenge competition jointly organized by Dept. of Science and Technology (DST), Lockheed Martin (LM) and Tata Trusts. A grant of Rs. 10 lakhs was awarded for the project as part of Phase A of the competition. During IAC-2017, the team met and Dr. Robie Roy, Vice President, Technology Strategy & Innovation, Corporate Engineering, Technology and Operations, Lockheed Martin Corporation, USA to discuss the prospects of the UWDES project. Dr Robie Roy conveyed to Dr Sharan Asundi, mentor for the project and adjunct faculty at CORI, PES University, that he was deeply impressed by the team’s work. Prakash M. Sesha, Lockheed Martin Fellow considered the presentation by team Aranea as one of the best student led presentations during the down-select at IIT Bombay and looked forward to collaborating as the concepts develop into a demonstrable prototype.
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