World’s lightest satellite made by Indian teen | Fusion - WeRIndia

At 18 years of age, the Grade 12 Tamil Nadu student Rifath Sharook has just made an innovation in spatial technology, and Indian achievements as well.

He has designed the world’s lightest satellite, the design of which will be launched in the June of this year by NASA.

He garnered their attention from his small town of Pallapatti in Tamil Nadu after winning a competition organized by NASA called Cubes In Space, which was done in association with an organization called I Doodle Learning.

The satellite that Sharook designed is made entirely out of carbon fiber that was crafted from a 3D printer, with a weight of merely sixty four grams, which is even lighter than most mobile smartphones.

The device will be launched into space for twelve minutes to explore how this new material can work in a micro gravity environment of space.

As noted by Sharook, this cube was a design made completely from scratch, with it fitting both a new kind of computer on board and eight separate indigenous sensors built into it that can measure the acceleration, the rotation, and also the magnetosphere of the earth.

The design that Sharook made thus completes the main challenge of the competition, to design an experiment that would be flown into space which would have all of these things stored in a cube of four square meters and a sixty four gram weight.

 

To honor Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who is both a famed, revered scientist and a former President of India, Sharook has named his satellite KalumSat after him.

This satellite will be launched in a sounding rocket in a mission to last a total of two hundred and forty minutes, or for four hours.

This mission also is a landmark in Indian achievement, for it is the first time in which NASA will launch an experimental design from a student from India.

Image Reference: BusinessStandard, TheBetterIndia