Algonquin College’s “rocket man” fired up by India’s moon mission
Posted on Friday, September 6th, 2019
Gokul Das Balachandran, a research associate in Algonquin College’s Data Analytics Centre, expects to spend most of Friday in front of a computer screen, watching the live streaming of his native country’s first attempt to land on the moon.
Sometime around 4 p.m. Ottawa time, the landing module of India’s unmanned moon mission, Chandrayaan-2, will touch down on the moon’s southern polar region. If all goes well, the Asian nation will be the fourth country to successfully reach the moon after the United States, Russia, and China.
For Balachandran, the event stirs deep emotions. “What is more exciting than doing something for the first time?” he says, pointing out that the world watched when the United States landed the first manned mission on the moon in 1969. “Space exploration is one of the biggest enterprises that humans have in the future.”
It’s also inspiring to many, he says. “The Indian space program captures the imagination of a huge population of nearly a billion. It is one of the biggest inspirations for young people to come into the STEM field – science, technology, engineering and math.”
It certainly inspired Balachandran. Born in 1986 in Thiruvananthapuram, a city of one million on the southwestern tip of India that is home to the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, he grew up dreaming of rockets and space travel.
“I remember sitting on my mother’s lap as a child and watching two astronauts carry out a spacewalk from a space station,” he says. “I used to follow all the space programs (of different nations).”
As a young man, he attended university to get a Bachelor’s in Technology, specializing in communication engineering. He then joined 350,000 other young graduates to write recruiting exams and undergo interviews in the hopes of getting a job in the space program. He was among the 300 who succeeded.
For the next seven years, from 2009 to 2016, Balachandran worked as a project engineer at the Space Centre, specializing in the avionics, navigation, control, and guidance systems used on the GSLV Mark III rocket – India’s biggest rocket – used for the Chandrayaan-2 mission.
He came to Canada in January 2019, following his wife, Aathira Preetharani, who had earlier come to Canada to study at Algonquin College. She is currently a student in the Business Management and Entrepreneurship program.
It didn’t take Balachandran long to find a job. In early 2019, he walked into Algonquin’s Data Analytics Centre and handed his resumé to Adesh Shah, a principal investigator at the Centre. Shah responded, “Oh, wow,” or words to that effect, Balachandran recalls with a smile.
He was a good fit. Earlier this year, Balachandran took part in the Summer RE/ACTION showcase event as a member of a Data Analytics Centre team partnered with the company AirShare to develop “friendly missiles” for detecting and downing drones. The missiles, guided by artificial intelligence, are designed to safely intercept unauthorized drones by deploying what AirShare describes as a “cloud” of latex countermeasures.
Balachandran is happy to be in Canada. Not only does he enjoy Ottawa – “it’s an entirely different atmosphere” – but he hopes to expand his technological knowledge with research into plasma and ion thruster engineering.
In the meantime, he appreciates the work he’s doing at Algonquin, applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to rocketry. “That is something very new.”
Of course, he remains a space enthusiast. “Space technology is expanding to private companies and Third World nations are getting into it. That’s exciting. I’m really passionate about space travel.”
That is only fitting. Chandrayaan is the Sanskrit word for “moon craft.” Balachandran means “young moon” in Sanskrit.
You may be able to watch live streams of the Indian moon landing through links here and here and here.
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