World’s lightest satellite weighing a mere 64 grams, called KalamSat, designed and developed not by professional space scientists and engineers, but by 18-year-old Tamil Nadu student Rifath Sharook and his team was launched by NASA on Thursday.
The tiny satellite, named after Abdul Kalam, was flown by a Nasa sounding rocket and the lift-off was from the space agency’s Wallop Island facility around 3 pm (IST). Kalam had his training in the sounding rocket programme at Wallops Island in the ’60s. KalamSat was the only Indian payload in the mission.
With the launch of the satellite, India has created a global space record.
Sharook said that the achievement would not have been possible without the support of his team. “It’s a 3-D printed satellite. It is for the first time that 3-D printing technology is being used in space. We have made history. The world’s smallest satellite has been launched into space. It was not possible without my team,” he said.
The project was carried out under the supervision of Dr Srimathy Kesan, founder and CEO of Space Kids India.
Kesan said the satellite separated from the rocket 125 minutes after it took off. She further added the NASA will recover the satellite and will send it back to them for recovering the data. “KalamSat fell into the sea. It will be recovered and NASA will be sending it back to us for decoding the data,”.
Describing the launch as “divine intervention”, Kesan further added that the 3.8 cm cube structured-satellite can fit in one’s palm and is fully 3-D printed. Equipped with Nano Geiger Muller counter for measuring the radiation in space, the satellite is built with reinforced carbon fibre polymer. “Space is not unreachable… Space has got no boundaries and therefore, let’s all do research together and let’s conquer Mars soon,” Kesan said.
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