The sky’s the limit, so they say. However, a young man from the small Indian town of Palpatti in Tamil Nadu is reaching further than that - to the stars above.
At just 18 years of age, Rifath Shaarook has designed and built what is thought to be the world’s smallest and lightest satellite - so small in fact, it can fit within the palm of your hand.
The 3-D printed cube weighs just 64 grams and measures four centimetres on all sides. Its light weight is due to its carbon fibre casing, which stores the electronic components.
In fact, speaking to the Times of India, Sharook said that the main role of the satellite is to demonstrate the “performance of 3-D printed carbon fibre”.
“We designed it completely from scratch”, he said. "It will have a new kind of on-board computer and eight indigenous built-in sensors to measure acceleration, rotation and the magnetosphere of the earth".
Sharook has called his creation ‘KalamSat’ after former Indian President and nuclear scientist, APJ Abdul Kalam.
Sharook’s satellite isn’t just for show, the young prodigy created the tiny device as part of a NASA-sponsored contest called “Cubes in Space”. The contest encourages students between the ages of 11 and 18 from all around the world to design and build small satellites in the shape of a cube that will then be launched into space on a NASA rocket or balloon.
The programme is run by education company idoole and supported by NASA and the Colorado Grant Consortium. Out of roughly 86,000 participants from 57 countries, only 80 were chosen. However, of those 80, Sharook’s satellite is the only one to be created using 3D printing.
NASA will now launch the tiny satellite into space on 21 June from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
The satellite will embark on a four-hour mission for a sub-orbital flight. During that time, the lightweight satellite will operate for around 12 minutes in a micro-gravity environment of space.
This will be the time ever that NASA will be conducting an Indian student’s experiment for its sub-orbital space flight.
Changing the future of the earth observation industry
Sharook’s design could go a long towards informing future satellite designs.
We need satellites not just for communication systems but also to observe our planet, track weather patterns and changes in climate etc.
The fact is, we need satellites and a lot of them. The problem is that conventional satellites are bulky, slow and costly. A big satellite can weigh more than 1000kg whereas a medium sized one weighs in between 500kg to 1000kg.
The solution is experimenting with smaller satellites that are far more cost effective. It takes one rocket to launch one traditional big satellite. However, one rocket can launch multiple small satellites weighing under 50kg, thus saving on cost and fuel emissions.
With advanced electronics and sensor systems, the fact of the matter is that smaller satellites can do almost anything that a big one can and at a fraction of the cost.
Satellites under 100kg already exist and are becoming more and more frequent. The satellite dubbed Dove from Planet Labs weighs in at just 4kg and is currently orbiting our earth taking incredibly detailed pictures of our world.
But how small is small? Well, so called mini satellites weigh between 100 and 500kg, micro satellites (10-100kg), Nano satellites (1-10kg), Pico satellites (0.1-1kg) and femtosatellites.
Considering its weight and small size, Sharook’s KalamSat can be considered as a femto satellite.
This is not Sharook’s first invention. The young genius also built a helium weather balloon when he was 15. Sharook works as one of the lead scientists at Chennai-based Space Kidz India, an organisation promoting science and education for Indian children and teenagers.
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