THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, 24 March 2007 — Top aerodynamic scientist Dr. V. Adimurthy is too busy these days planning India’s moon mission, Chandrayan, as a key member of its Task Force. But he’s not in haste and the rocket man loves to ride the slowest vehicle when it comes to his personal preferences-his bicycle. And he says he gets most of his creative ideas while pedaling his bicycle every day from his downtown home to his VSSC workstation eight km away and back.
A teammate of President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam while making the indigenous satellite launch vehicle SLV-3, he is at present the associate director of India’s premier space research center, Vikram Sarabhai Space Center (VSSC), under the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) which catapulted India into the elite satellite club.
Adimurthy, 60, rides at least 16 km a day and he’s everywhere on his human-powered vehicle, whether it is an official function or private one. For residents of Kumarapuram in the city, he has been a regular sight for the past 20 years.
“I have been the equivalent of three times around the world,” he told an international seminar recently. The earth’s circumference is 40,000 km! But his family members and security officers are worried about his safety.
An authority on hypersonic (faster than sound) flows, he begs to differ when people say health only forces him to pedal his rickety cycle. “It’s secondary. I love and enjoy riding it. Most of my creative ideas come while pedaling my favorite vehicle, especially during morning rides,” he says.
Adimurthy joined the ISRO in 1973, soon after he obtained a doctoral degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. Since then, he has held various positions in ISRO as a researcher and team leader. He has made significant contributions to aerodynamics, flight dynamics, trajectory optimization, parameter estimation, computational fluid dynamics and multidisciplinary design optimization and space debris studies.
Busy developing low-cost spacecraft, he complains that cycle repair and servicing joints are fast disappearing as people have shifted to motor powered ones and children go for thruways models. “I’m doing most of the repair work on my own these days,” he says.
Adimurthy had recently been to Bangalore for a brainstorming session on Chandrayan. “One of the objectives of Chandrayan is to give an impetus to scientific thinking and education in the county. I am happy it has interested and inspired the younger generation,” he says.
The VSSC here and the Indian Space Research Organization Satellite Center (ISAC) in Bangalore are jointly planning to put ‘Somayana-1’, the spacecraft, in orbit at the earliest available occasion. According to Adimurthy, the moon mission is a stepping stone to other missions and the energy of the moon can be used to do inter-planetary travel.
Each time the Russians or the Americans sent something to orbit the moon, they had to revise their earlier data on its gravity field. Besides, in spite of so many missions, many regions of the moon have not been explored.
The Task Force studied orbital mechanics and found that there are two or three ways of going to the moon. It found that instead of going the circular parking orbit, it is better to go the elliptical orbit. “This is the fastest and cheapest way of going to the moon,” he says.
Adimurthy is a Distinguished Visiting Professor of the Indian National Academy of Engineers.
He is a Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and was a visiting scientist at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, during 1979-80 and 1999-2000. Since 1999, Adimurthy served as the ISRO representative in the Inter Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC), a body representing countries addressing the issues of space debris. He was the chairman of this international forum during 2002-2003. For his contributions to Rocket and Related Technologies, he received the 1997 Astronautic Society of India Award.
