Abhilash Vakkada Ramachandran

• PhD
• ISRU Engineer at Hydromars AB

As space exploration advances, the importance of tapping resources from other planets, known as In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU), becomes increasingly vital to reduce the cost of resupply missions. On Mars, resources such as water, regolith, light, and CO2 can be used to grow food, and previous studies have demonstrated the possibility of growin...

The water processes that affect the upper layers of the surface of Mars are not yet fully understood. Describing the processes that may induce changes in the water content of the surface is critical to determine the present-day habitability of the Martian surface, understanding the atmospheric water cycle, and estimate the efficiency of future wate...

Environmental chambers are used to test the expected performance of space instrumentation and to investigate certain processes which are relevant in space or other planetary environments. In this study, a computational model of an existing Martian experimental facility is investigated numerically using COMSOL Multiphysics. For this purpose, we cons...

Tribocorrosion is a degradation phenomenon of material surfaces subjected to the combined action of mechanical loading and corrosion attack caused by the environment. Although corrosive chemical species such as materials like chloride atoms, chlorides, and perchlorates have been detected on the Martian surface, there is a lack of studies of its imp...

The water content of the upper layers of the surface of Mars is not yet quantified. Laboratory simulations are the only feasible way to investigate this in a controlled way on Earth, and then compare it with remote and in situ observations of spacecrafts on Mars. Describing the processes that may induce changes in the water content of the surface i...

Geomorphological studies of the hidden and protected subsurface environments are crucial to obtain a greater insight into the evolution of planetary landforms, hydrology, climate, geology and mineralogy. From an astrobiological point of view subsurface environments are of interest for their potential habitability as they are local environments that...

PACKMAN (PArticle Counter k-index Magnetic ANomaly) is an autonomous, light and robust space weather instrument for operation within the subsurface, surface and atmosphere (as payload in stratospheric balloons) of the Earth. It has been designed using Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components to reduce the cost of each unit and to allow to have mu...

We describe a versatile simulation chamber that operates under representative space conditions (pressures from < 10⁻⁵ mbar to ambient and temperatures from 163 to 423 K), the SpaceQ chamber. This chamber allows to test instrumentation, procedures, and materials and evaluate their performance when exposed to outgassing, thermal vacuum, low temperatu...

Tribocorrosion is a degradation phenomenon of material surfaces subjected to the combined action of mechanical loading and corrosion attack caused by the environment. Although corrosive chemical species such as materials like chloride atoms, chlorides and perchlorates have been detected on the Martian surface, there is a lack of studies of its impa...

The HABIT (HabitAbility: Brine Irradiation and Temperature) instrument is a European payload of the ExoMars 2022 Surface Platform Kazachok that will characterize the present-day habitability at its landing place in Oxia Planum, Mars. HABIT consists of two modules: (i) EnvPack (Environmental Package) that monitors the thermal environment (air and gr...

The HabitAbility: Brines, Irradiation and Temperature (HABIT) instrument will be part of the ExoMars 2020 mission (ESA/Roscosmos) and will be the first European In-situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) instrument capable of producing liquid water on Mars. HABIT is composed by two modules: Environmental Package (EnvPack) and Brine Observation Transition...

The certain imbalance in the water utilization and distribution have significantly affected the water security globally including megacities like New York, Chicago in the United States, Brazil’s São Paulo, South Africa’s Cape Town and various parts of China and India. Studies suggest that, this is being driven not just by climate change, but by pop...

The HABIT (HabitAbility, Brines, Irradiation and Temperature) instrument, will be the first Swedish Instrument that will land on the surface of Mars as a part of the ExoMars 2020 mission (ESA/IKI). It is also the first European ISRU (In-situ Resource Utilization) instrument capable of producing liquid water on Mars extracting atmospheric water vapo...

Autonomous exploration requires the use of movable platforms that carry a payload of instruments with a certain level of autonomy and communication with the operators. This is particularly challenging in subsurface environments, which may be more dangerous for human access and where communication with the surface is limited. Subsurface robotic expl...

This work describes the new SpaceQ (Space Qualification) chamber at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden, and its performance. This chamber is designed to operate instrumentation in representative space conditions (vacuum, Mars atmosphere, Earth stratosphere, lunar environment, etc.) and to validate their performance by acquiring real-time data i...

The search for unequivocal proofs of liquid water on present day Mars is a prominent domain of research with implications on habitability and future Mars exploration. The HABIT (Habitability: Brines, Irradiation, and Temperature) instrument that will be on-board the ExoMars 2020 Surface Platform (ESA-IKI Roscosmos) will investigate the habitability...

The Earth's atmosphere is continuously bombarded by energetic charged particles and high energy photons from space. To date, there is a missing gap of information regarding the amount, energy, time variability, and type of space radiation that reaches the lower layers of the atmosphere, as well as on its geographic and altitude distribution and the...

The deep subsurface of other planetary bodies is of special interest for robotic and human exploration. The subsurface provides access to planetary interior processes, thus yielding insights into planetary formation and evolution. On Mars, the subsurface might harbour the most habitable conditions. In the context of human exploration, the subsurfac...

We suggest to use the Deep Space Gateway (DSG) spacecraft as an enabling platform to demonstrate long time functionality under different gravitational environments of a self-sustained greenhouse and to solve the problem of providing critical resources such as water, oxygen and food to humans in space, where harsh climatic conditions impede farming...

We propose active phased array radar to track and catalogue space debris at high altitudes on DSG platform. Present estimates of debris in orbit, by statistical models indicate: 29 000 objects of size > 10cm 750 000 objects of size 1cm - 10cm 166 million objects of size 1mm - 1cm And the numbers are ever increasing due to the increased frequency of...

The idea of this experiment is to provide a platform for testing various kinds of coating, paint, materials, components etc. to determine that the experiment being tested is suitable/viable to be applied on future spacecraft/space stations used for deep-space travel. The platform can also be used to test anything designed to be placed on the outsid...

A thorough scientific understanding of the spectral distribution of the infrared energy emitted by the Earth system is of the utmost importance, being fundamentally linked to the Earth’s Radiation Budget (ERB), and implicitly containing signatures of many of the components responsible for driving, and responding to, climate change. In the global me...

The idea of this proposal is to use the Deep Space Gateway (DSG) spacecraft as a platform to house an autonomous robotic manipulation (ARM) enabled bio-examination and protection station (Fig. 1) to perform biological activity examination on extra-terrestrial samples obtained from different celestial bodies and sterilize samples before returning to...

The current state-of-the-art methods of mass gauging of Electric Propulsion (EP) propellants in microgravity conditions rely on external measurements that are taken at the surface of the tank. The tanks are operated under a constant thermal duty cycle to store the propellant within a pre-defined temperature and pressure range. We demonstrate using...