Hrishik Mishra, a SiliconTech alumnus (EEE, 2010) is currently working as a research associate at the Department of Analysis and Control of Advanced Robotic Systems in the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics of the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Additionally, he is pursuing his doctoral studies at the Vienna University of Technology under Prof. Andreas Kugi’s supervision.
At DLR, Hrishik is conducting research in the area of orbital robotics where he aims to develop robotic technologies for on-orbit servicing operations (e.g. refueling satellites), on-orbit assembly (e.g. building a telescope), and active debris removal. Through his research, he has got the opportunity to work on projects that are funded by DLR (internal), the European Union (EU), European Space Agency (ESA), and other external organizations like NASA.
Hrishik has contributed to an ‘ESA-funded project COMRADE’, in which he performed a feasibility study to grasp ENVISAT, which is a decommissioned 8000-Kg satellite moving uncontrollably in space. Recently, he has delivered a control design to the ‘ESA-funded project MIRROR’, which aims to assemble a large telescope in orbit using a walking robot. He is also currently contributing to the control design in the ‘ EROSS+ project’, the follow-up of which will be a mission to demonstrate the capability of robotic capture of a tumbling satellite.
Apart from European collaborations, he also contributed to the TumbleDoc project, which is a collaboration between DLR, NASA, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In this project, the goal was to use the ‘NASA Astrobee platform on the ISS’ to simulate the relative dynamics between two satellites. A preliminary test on the International Space Station (ISS) has already been conducted and the work is in progress.
