Hello, I am Sankar. I am a software craftsman. In my day job I have created software solutions in networking and storage domains over a couple of decades. Outside of work, I am passionate about computing, astronomy, science, and photography. I am happy to share a glimpse of my interests on this site. Thanks for visiting!
I have developed spacecraft orbit animations for Chandrayaan-3 (ISRO), Chandrayaan-2 (ISRO), Mars Orbiter Mission (ISRO), and New Horizons (NASA) for educational purposes. These animations use real orbit ephemerides data from JPL NASA shared via the Horizons platform. I have been influential in making this data public for the first time in 2013 during the Mars Orbiter Mission. I am thankful to Jon D. Giorgini at JPL who has been very supportive in answering my queries during the development of these scientific visualizations. While all animations support 2D, the CY2 and CY3 animations support 3D. The CY3 animation also brings along a few new features such as PoV visualizations and reference plane visualizations. All animations have controls to visualize the orbits as heliocentric, geocentric, selenocentric, or Mars centric as the case may be. You can pan and zoom as well or keep an object of interest centered while the world moves around it. Mission timelines are shown with annotated events such as orbit boost burns and orbit insertions. Source code for these animations are available on my GitHub site under the MIT license. These animations have been well received over social media for their educational content.
Chandrayaan-3 (ISRO, Wikipedia) is the third lunar exploration mission developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation, and comes after Chandrayaan-2. It consists of a lunar propulsion module, and includes the Vikram lander, and the Pragyan lunar rover, all of which were developed in India. It was launched on 14 July 2023. It did a successful soft landing on the Moon on 23rd August, 2023.
Chandrayaan-2 (ISRO, Wikipedia) is the second lunar exploration mission developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation, after Chandrayaan-1. It consists of a lunar orbiter, and included the Vikram lander, and the Pragyan lunar rover, all of which were developed in India. It was launched on 22 July 2019. Lunar orbit insertion was done on 22 August 2019. The Vikram lander crashed on the lunar surface very close to an attempted soft landing on 6 September 2019.
The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also called Mangalyaan (ISRO, Wikipedia) is a space probe orbiting Mars since 24 September 2014. It was launched on 5 November 2013 by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). It is India's first interplanetary mission and it made it the fourth space agency to achieve Mars orbit, after Roscosmos, NASA, and the European Space Agency. It made India the first Asian nation to reach Martian orbit and the first nation in the world to do so on its maiden attempt.
New Horizons (NASA, Wikipedia) is an interplanetary space probe that was launched as a part of NASA's New Frontiers program. Engineered by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), with a team led by Alan Stern, the spacecraft was launched in 2006 with the primary mission to perform a flyby study of the Pluto system in 2015, and a secondary mission to fly by and study one or more other Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) in the decade to follow, which became a mission to 486958 Arrokoth. It is the fifth space probe to achieve the escape velocity needed to leave the Solar System.
As crazy as it may sound, I did cinematography for an indie movie Antahkaran (2015). I also co-produced it along with a couple of friends. The movie was directed by Rag Mayur (IMDB, Instagram) and Anil Nainwal and the cast included Shweta Gupta (IMDB, Instagram), Srinivas Shetty, Naveen Tater, and Reha Gupta. It was an amazing learning experience for me where I had to work outside my comfort zone. Eventually, it turned out to be an unforgettable and enjoyable experience with a team of passionate people who had a dream to accomplish.
