Rifath Sharook, an 18 year old from Tamil Nadu town of Pallapatti, might be relatively an unknown name for many, but this youngster is all set to break many records. He created world’s most lightest satellite, weighing just 64 grams! Hard to believe isn’t it?
“KalamSat” is the name of the satellite and the name understandably is inspired from the legendary APJ Abdul Kalam. Interestingly, NASA will be launching this along with sounding rocket on June 21 from Wallop Islands. This also is the first time that an Indian student’s experiment will be flown all the way to NASA.
the teenager said as quoted by TOI that it will be a sub-orbital flight and post-launch, the mission span will be 240 minutes and the tiny satellite will operate for 12 minutes in a micro-gravity environment of space.
“The main role of the satellite will be to demonstrate the performance of 3-D printed carbon fibre,” he explained. He said the satellite was selected through a competition called ‘Cubes in Space’, jointly organised by NASA and a organisation called ‘I Doodle Learning’.
He also explained that the toughest part in the entire mission is to fit the design into a tiny little cube, to ensure that it will weigh just 64 grams.
“We did a lot of research on different cube satellites all over the world and found ours was the lightest,” he said. Rifath said the satellite is made mainly of reinforced carbon fibre polymer. “We obtained some of the components from abroad and some are indigenous,” he said.
What have we done when we were eighteen? Well, this guy is not just making his family and surroundings proud, but also the entire nation. To receive such an honor from NASA is something many dream of. An average satellite generally weighs around 300 KG, but to have condensed that to 64 grams is really a spectacular achievement
