BENGALURU: An experimental inflatable structure designed as a precursor to future orbital factories and expandable space habitats has completed its first high-altitude flight test, taking Bengaluru-based Akashalabdhi Space a step closer to demonstrating technologies for building infrastructure in space.The company flew “a 250-litre rigidizable inflatable structure” aboard a high-altitude balloon to approximately 30km, in a 25kg experimental mission conducted through the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research’s (TIFR) National Balloon Facility in Hyderabad early on Tuesday (Nov 3).The flight carried two research payloads. The first, the Microbial Regolith Experiment (MRX), developed by Prof Aloke Kumar’s lab at IISc. It investigates microbial processes that could help consolidate regolith, the loose soil and rocky material covering the surfaces of the Moon and Mars, into construction materials.Biological methods of binding such material could eventually reduce the amount of building materials that future lunar and planetary missions would need to transport from Earth. The high-altitude flight provided an opportunity to expose the experiment to near-space conditions, with scientific assessment to follow after recovery. The balloon mission did not simulate sustained microgravity.Kumar said Tuesday’s test flight will give them enough data and confidence to prepare for an orbital test. TOI was the first to report about Kumar’s lab building bricks for Moon and Mars using Lunar and Martial soil simulants.The second was an experimental perovskite solar-cell payload from Switzerland-based Perovskia Solar. The experiment was intended to assess how photovoltaic technology responds to low atmospheric pressure, low temperatures and changing solar illumination.During the test, one outcome surprised Akashlabdhi. Its CEO Siddarth Jena told TOI: “The module, which was expected to sustain some damage during landing, absorbed the impact without the anticipated damage. The ability of the structure and its protective systems to withstand landing loads is important for future missions involving the recovery of experimental hardware and materials from space.”The mission was designed to test how an expandable structure behaves when deployed from a compactly packaged configuration, inflated and subsequently rigidised to retain its shape without depending continuously on internal pressure. Such structures could eventually provide larger working volumes for orbital manufacturing, commercial space stations, microgravity laboratories and habitation modules without requiring equally large launch-vehicle payload volumes.At the time of writing this copy, the company was still awaiting confirmation of two parameters before declaring all mission objectives achieved. These concern the performance of the solar-cell experiment and whether the parachute deployment achieved the targeted terminal velocity of 5 m/second.The balloon flight also offered an opportunity to assess the behaviour of onboard electronics, power systems, sensors, autonomous controls and telemetry under conditions of low atmospheric pressure and extreme cold.At approximately 30km, atmospheric pressure is only 1-2% of that at sea level, while temperatures can fall to around minus 45-50° Celsius. These conditions provide an intermediate testing environment between lab experiments and spaceflight, although they don’t replicate orbital vacuum, sustained microgravity or full radiation environment of space.The flight is part of its ANTARIKSHAB programme — TOI was the first to report about the programme — which aims to develop expandable infrastructure for future orbital manufacturing and habitation. The company is already looking beyond the balloon demonstration.
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Jena said the next major milestone is an orbital mission planned for March, using Skyroot’s Vikram-2 rocket. The proposed mission will carry a larger with the overall payload mass expected to be around 70kg. It will include two of the company’s material-development experiments to be conducted in microgravity and a data-centre payload.Tuesday’s flight provides the engineering data needed to refine the technology before it moves towards orbital qualification. It is an important intermediate step, rather than a demonstration of an operational space factory or an orbital re-entry system.
