Proud Moment! NASA shows interest in ‘Made in India’ tech for spacecrafts

A new thermal spray coating technology used for gas turbine engine in spacecrafts developed by a Rajasthan-based researcher has caught the attention of a NASA scientist, an official said. Expressing his interest in the research, James L Smialek, a scientist from NASA wrote to Dr Satish Tailor after it was published in the journal Ceramics International and Thermal Spray Bulletin, said SC Modi, the chairman of a Jodhpur-based Metallizing Equipment Company (MEC).

While working at MEC as a chief scientist, Research and Development, (R&D), Dr Tailor developed the controlled segmented Yttria Stabilised Zirconia (YSZ)-Plasma sprayed coating technology, which according to him could reduce the thermal spray coating cost by almost 50 per cent. “In simple language, vertical cracks (segmentation) in the coating are beneficial for gas turbine engine application used in spacecrafts,” Dr Tailor said.

“At present, researchers are developing such cracks through very expensive processes (in several crore) and cracks are generated during the coating deposition process, and crack generation is not controllable,” he told PTI. He said he has shared his research papers with the NASA scientist who had written him an email regarding this.

Scientists working at the country’s leading research organisations – the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research …read more