India's unsung heroes: This teen-wonder from TN made world's lightest satellite

Shaarook, who is a lead scientist in Chennai-based Space Kidz India, is a class 12th student in Crescent Matriculation Higher Secondary School in Pallapatti.

Among 86,000 designs submitted by contestants across the world for NASA's "Cubes in Space" contest, 80 get selected. One of these 80 technological marvels is a 64 grams satellite, said to be world's lightest, which was carried to space on Terrier-Improved Orion Rocket on June 22, 2017. And what will make every Indian's chest swell with pride is that this minuscule marvel was designed by a class 12th student from Tamil Nadu.

Eighteen-year old Mohammed Rifath Shaarook, who hails from Pallapatti in Tamil Nadu, led a team of six to build this nano satellite which is made of reinforced carbon fibre.

The satellite named Kalam Sat, after late president APJ Abdul Kalam, was to be launched by a sub-orbital spaceflight with an expected mission time of 240 minutes. It was to stay in operation for less than 12 minutes to demonstrate the performance of 3-D printed carbon fibre in a microgravity environment of space.

Shaarook, who is a lead scientist in Chennai-based Space Kidz India, is a class 12th student in Crescent Matriculation Higher Secondary School in Pallapatti. Vinay Bharadwaj, Tanishq Dwevdi, Yagnasai, Abdul Kashif and Gobi Nath were part of the team that designed the satellite.

Shaarook, who lost his father Mohammed Farook when he was class 5, said that it took more than 2 years to design the satellite.

Talking about the difficulty he faced while trying to build the satellite, he said the main challenge was to design an experiment, which fit into the strict physical dimension required, i.e. four centimetres and weighing exactly 64 grams.

"We did a lot of research on different cube satellites all over the world and found ours was the lightest," he is reported to have said.

The entire project was undertaken under the supervision Dr Srimathy Kesan, Founder and CEO of Space Kidz India. After the satellite was selected by NASA, Kesan said that it would motivate other students to take a bold step in the field of science and innovation.

This minuscule satellite has entered Asia Book of Records, India Book of Records and Assist World Records for "World's lightest and smallest satellite".

Feats such as these ought to be recognised and motivated so that youth across the country take interest in science. Nurturing such talents will go a long way in creating a pool of innovators and scientists who would guide the nation to the forefront of the technological revolution that the world is witnessing.

OneIndia News