Rachana Agrawal is a PhD student in the AAC research group majoring in Astrodynamics and Space Applications with a minor in Systems Engineering. Her research interests include developing mission concepts, mission design, trajectory design, EDL (Entry, Descent and Landing) and space system concepts.
Her thesis is towards designing mission architecture elements for human missions to Mars. She works on the concept of an orbiting logistics node around Mars to enable a sustainable human presence on Mars in future. She has also been fascinated by the possibility of life elsewhere in the Solar System which got her interested in a rover tire testing project funded by NASA for exploring the Ocean Worlds. She was part of JPL’s Planetary Science Summer Seminar in 2019 where she participated in a concurrent engineering process of mission design to intercept an interstellar object. She was also the cost chair for the study.
She graduated with a B.Tech and M.Tech in Aerospace Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Mumbai (IITB) in 2017. There she was an active part of the student satellite team, Pratham. She was part of the core team from 2013 to 2016 and headed the Communications Sub-system of the cubesat which was launched by ISRO in 2016. She was also one of the first members of the Mars Society of India where she was part of the electrical sub-system of a six-wheel rocker bogie rover. She designed and developed the robotic arm for the rover.
CV (March 2020)
Contact: agrawa77@purdue.edu