Emdad Rahman
An 18-year-old Indian teen has invented the world’s smallest satellite.
The Panchayat town in Virudhunagar, Pallapatti unleashed its very own hero after one of their sons was selected as a participant on ‘Cubes in Space’ – A collaboration between NASA and ‘I Doodle Learning.’
Rifath Sharook, a student protege from Tamil Nadu led a team to create the 64-gramme KalamSat, named after former President APJ Abdul Kalam.
Speaking to ANI, Sharook paid tribute to the collective efforts, backup and support of his team. He said, “It’s a 3D printed satellite. It is for the first time that 3D printing technology is being used in space. We have made history. The world’s smallest satellite has been launched in space. It was not possible without my team.”
Sharook has always expressed great interest in astronomy, science, technology and contributed as a student writer journalist for an Indian science magazine. As lead scientist, Sharook teamed up with six fellow students to plan and execute the project at Space Kidz India, Chennai.
He spoke about the uniqueness of the satellite adding, “We did a lot of research on different cube satellites all over the world, and found that ours was the lightest. We obtained some of the components from abroad, and some are indigenous. The satellite is made mainly of reinforced carbon fibre polymer.”
The landmark assignment was undertaken and completed under the general supervision and oversight of Dr Srimathy Kesan, the CEO and founder of Space Kidz India.
This is not the first such breakthrough the Indian prodigy has been involved in. Three years ago whilst participating at the young Scientist Awards, he developed a weather balloon weighing 1200 grammes.
In January 2019 version 2 of the satellite became the world’s lightest satellite ever to be put into orbit.
