Mexico will develop its own aerospace technology, says IPN specialist

We are trying to break the paradigm that Mexico is a country that assembles aerospace technology, and promote projects that allow us to be owners of our own technology. We are at a point where our industry has to go from being users to developersstated Mario Alberto Mendoza Bárcenas, from the Aerospace Development Center of the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) and leader of the country’s first suborbital mission.

Mendoza Bárcenas directs the IPN team that designed the Experimental Module for the Iterative Design of Satellite Subsystems version 6 (Emidss-6 ), in which the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) also collaborates, through the Institute of Applied Sciences and Technology.

The device will be launched on December 31 into the stratosphere with the support of the Scientific Balloon Program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the United States National Science Foundation.

The mission will be carried out from McMurdo Base, in Antarctica, and will last between 15 to 20 days, during which it will make a complete revolution around the Earth. The module will be aboard a superpressure balloon (SPB) that will allow it to have a prolonged float time in the stratosphere.

In interview with The Day, The scientist highlighted that the participation of the IPN is the product of collaboration with the US space agency since 2019.

“The projects that we have developed over the past five years have allowed us to generate trust and credibility with NASA, to such a degree that we have advanced from Emidss-1 al 5, and we have received an additional invitation to participate in the mission from Antarctica.”

Mendoza Bárcenas reported that in 2019 the IPN collaborated for the first time with NASA, when this university and other national institutions proposed developing a technological platform for the development of experiments with instruments that will later be integrated into orbital space vehicles.

This is how the project came about Emidss-1, instrument that contained environmental sensors and a flight computer, with dimensions compatible with a small satellite measuring 10 by 10 by 10 centimeters. After being subjected to an evaluation by American experts in terms of technical, security, and scientific and technological objectives, it was launched on September 4, 2019, from New Mexico, United States.

From that first collaboration the new project emerged, Edmiss 2, in 2021, when Due to the pandemic conditions, we had to recycle part of what was the first version, and we could not be in New Mexico to participate in the integration processes and electromagnetic compatibility tests prior to launchnarrated Mendoza Bárcenas.

That flight was operated by NASA engineers, it lasted 15 hours (the Emidss-1 only six) and a trip of 300 kilometers towards the west coast, landing in the Arizona desert.

The third ship was the Emidss-3, which had a change in morphology, since it went from 2 kilograms to around 18. We also carry more complex instrumentation, two flight computers and other types of batteries to power all the electronics..

The researcher considered that this artifact strengthened the collaboration with NASA and other national academic groups, such as the Western Institute of Technology and Higher Studies, which provided a flight computer model, based on a circuit for automotive applications, which they were looking for. test in close space environment.

In 2023 it was launched Emidss-4 with a change in the structure, making it simpler, but without losing the main operating philosophy: We are a small instrument compared to others, such as cosmic ray detector telescopes, which weigh tons; we do not exceed the 20 kilogram barrier.

The specialist added that with these projects, confidence was consolidated to move towards the Emidss-5, which will be released in August.

He explained that the mission to Antarctica at the end of the year “is a milestone because we are going to provide an instrument that will operate under environmental conditions very different from those of Mexico and the United States. This site imposes challenges in matters of temperature and solar radiation, it will last 15 days, in which the instrument will be in floating mode at about 35 kilometers high and will seek to collect the greatest amount of data related to climatological variables.

In addition, the instrument will have high-resolution cameras for the identification of some pollutants in the air, particularly microplastics, a very important issue not only because of the implications it has for human health, but also because of all the repercussions on global warming.

He maintained that until now Mexico is working on these projects with foreign technology, The semiconductors we use are not manufactured here nor are other materials, but an important point is the integration of these elements for a specific purpose, such as the aerospace field..

With these exercises, he concluded, the country is on the path to generating its own technology, It is a long-term goal, because of what it represents in terms of infrastructure, investment, etc., but we are on the path to being owners of our own technology, to depend less and less on external technology..