This 18-year-old Indian student designs world's lightest satellite

For the first time ever, an 18-year-old Indian student from Tamil Nadu Rifath Sharook designs the world’s lightest satellite, which is going to be used by NASA. The satellite was reportedly selected through a competition called ‘Cubes in Space,’ organised by NASA and ‘I Doodle Learning.’

The KalamSat satellite — which is 64gm light — will be launched by NASA on June 21 from a NASA facility in Wallops Island.

Sharook was reported by an English publication to be saying that the satellite will be a sub-orbital flight. KalamSat satellite is made of re-inforced carbon fibre polymer. The mission will span for about 240 minutes and the 64gm-light satellite will operate for about 12 minutes in a micro-gravity environment of space.

“The main role of the satellite will be to demonstrate the performance of 3D printer carbon fibre,” he explained.

Rifath Sharook said that the main challenge while designing the satellite was selecting the material that would prove to be the lightest.

“We did a lot of research on different cube satellites all over the world and found ours was the lightest,” he said.