Sinhgad Institutes Engineering Students develop space balloon for Global Space Balloon Challenge 2020
25 Sep 2019, Pune- A 12 member team of bright engineering students of Smt Kashibai Navale College of Engineering, Vadgaon, one of the premier engineering colleges of Sinhgad Group of Institutes, Pune; guided by Dr. Nitin P. Sherje; Head of Mechanical Engineering Department along with Prof. Dhananjay Khankal, Faculty Coordinator are all set to compete with the best global teams in the South Africa for the Global Space Balloon Challenge 2020 – GSBC 2020; scheduled in April 2020. They will be sending a helium filled balloon designed to reach a height of 1,00,000 feet into the stratosphere, close to space. The balloon will carry a payload of cameras, sensors and transmitters, with a parachute attached. The balloon is capable of sending live telemetry consisting of data and flight parameters to the control station manned by the students’ team. On reaching the set altitude of one lakh feet, the balloon would burst and payload will float back to a designated location on Earth. The telemetry system shall measure the latitude, altitude, velocity, heading, GPS timing, temperature data and such other data which would be processed by a microcontroller and transmitted to the base station throughout the flight of the balloon, both ascending and descending. The balloon would be influenced by extreme temperatures, strong winds etc and while descending it would also be affected by pull of gravity due to explosion of the balloon. The cameras in the balloon would capture very stunning pictures from high altitude and if all goes well, the team hopes to have a video which can be watched live on the You tube. This is the bigger dream objective besides winning the prestigious SA Hot Air Balloon Challenge.
The fact that the payload will come down is certain, but where it comes down is a completely different story. What goes up must come down. At high altitudes the helium inside the balloon eventually expands and bursts the balloon. Consequently once it reaches its destination of 1,00,000 ft it will burst. The payload will then be dropped and a parachute will be deployed to guide it gently back to earth. The team has to predict an approximate landing location based on weather models, the amount of helium in the balloon and a number of other factors, but no amount of research can predict an exact landing location. One of the conditions in the competition is to land the balloon in the radius set by GSBC. This is the biggest challenge of tracking team.
According to Prasad, Captain of the team, “The balloon will help us to get accurate reading of the meteorological data. One can measure temperature changes and variations, pressure differences, moisture changes in different layers of air, and the properties of air through this balloon”.
“Just as Google uses a meteorological balloon to find out the temperature on a daily basis, this balloon will help us to record temperature changes from ground level to different hemispheres of the earth and act upon it accordingly”, says Syali Kale a third year engineering student of Sinhgad Institutes while explaining about how the balloon can be used for observing factors of climate change.
The challenges in this highly prestigious project are numerous, starting right from the correct design and use of materials for right size, shape, efficient fuel tanks, burners, basket to carry the payloads etc to the successful launch, retrieval of payload, monitoring at all levels, collecting the desired data and so on
Dr. Nitin Sherje; HOD Mechanical Engineering of Smt Kashibai Navale College of Engineering, and Prof. Dhananjay Khankal of Sinhgad College of Engineering, both from Vadgaon Campus, are the two faculty members spearheading this project, helping the students at every point to move progressively ahead supported by Dr. A.V. Deshpande, Campus Director & Principal of SKNCOE, Dr. S.D. Lokhande, Principal SCOE, Dr. Kishor Borole, Vice Principal SKNCOE.
According to Dr. Sherje, “One of the noteworthy learnings for the students is that they understand the importance of collaboration and teamwork in engineering. Engineering requires teamwork to solve problems and a project of this nature is highly technical, with pitfalls and problems at every nook and corner. The students learn to overcome the challenges. They realize that overcoming challenges is the only way to move progressively ahead and challenges are the greatest learning opportunities. The project involves a lot of research and the team learns a lot through research”.
“Besides winning the competition, our objective is also to use the balloon flights cost-effectively and it is a part of the students’ project based on space technology’ says Prof. Dhananjay Khankal the Faculty Co-ordinator of the group. “It is very exciting for the students to develop a plan on paper and turn it into reality – they get to learn the entire gamut of engineering from ideation, brainstorming, to optimization and the importance of communication and coordination too. This is in addition to budgeting, man management, communication and convincing skills and so on which will develop them into leadership position in future.”
The biggest inspiration for the students is the Founder President of Sinhgad Institutes Prof. M. N. Navale who makes sure that the students achieve the goals that they set their sights on.
According to Rohit Navale, Vice President, “Sinhgad Institutes has an established reputation of winning global competitions and we are confident that our Balloon team will bring laurels to the College, to our City, State as well as to the Nation. Projects of this nature are research led with interdisciplinary collaboration. Students get a hands on experience in the application of knowledge besides competing with the best in the world which gives them unmatched confidence to face any challenge in their life. We are committed to maintain and build on technologies and skills of the future for our bright engineering students to make them global leaders.”
