CHENNAI: An 18-year-old Tamil Nadu student, along with his young teammates, made history by building world’s lightest satellites, which weighs around 64 grammes. Named as Kalamsat, the 3D printed satellite reached the space on Thursday. Dr Srimathy Kesan, the mission director and founder & CEO of Space Kids, said, “ The whole mission was to make space machines cost effective. We used reinforced carbon-fibre polymer material that was economical. The whole idea was to see how this satellite reacts in space, and if this reacts efficiently, even bigger cubes can be developed using this material and the cost will phenomenally come down.”
Taking the humble journey, Kesan said that we worked three and half months for this project. Out of 57 proposals, ours was the only one that got selected with respect to a cube converted into a satellite. “In 2015, We launched balloon satellite (as it is called), which created ripples due to its high cost and that we worked towards the building of a cost effective satellite,” she added.
‘Cubes In Space’, an annual international competition conducted by the Colorado Space Grant Consortium, I Doodle Learning ink and NASA, posed a challenge that we need to set an experimental proposal in a four-centimetre cube. It, fortunately, coincided with us doing research on how to shrink the size and weight of a satellite that time. We registered for the competition and got selected,” said one of the teammates.
Addressing the press, Rifath Shaarook, the young scientist said, “I am really happy that we launched the lightest satellite and I am proud to be part of this team”. Meanwhile, the Tamil Nadu assembly today congratulated the young scientists on their successful mission. Rifath Shaarook (lead scientist), Vinay S Bharadwaj (structural engineer), Yagna Sai (lead technician), Tanishq Dwivedi (Flight Engineer), Mohammad Abdul Kashif (lead engineering) and Gopinath (Biologist) are the team members behind the building of the lightest satellite.
