TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter
What are the chances that a pocket-sized cube made out of carbon fibre and weighing just 100 gm will work as a satellite? Sounds very futuristic and the kind of stuff you would see in Sci-Fi movies, right? But an 18-year-old boy from Tamilnadu has just made this possible.
Rifath Sharook, a 12th-grade student from Tamil Nadu’s Pallapatti town has set a new record in making world’s smallest and lightest satellite. And, it works and will be launched soon.
The story of this amazing feat does not stop here. The satellite is the first- ever in the world which is made by 3D printing, a technique which still is in beta phase worldwide.
With his invention, Sharook has also set a record where he has become first Indian whose invention is being launched by NASA.
Made as a part of the NASA’s competition project ‘cubes in space’, Sharook’s satellite KalamSat is all set to be launched in space by NASA, where it will spend about 12 minutes.
Sharook has named his satellite after former Indian President and Missile man APJ Abdul Kalam.
This is not his first invention. A cCouple of years back, he made a helium-based weather balloon as part of science project competition in Chennai.
Priority purpose of the satellite will be to test the durability of carbon fibre in space along with the behaviour of 3D-printed structures so that the space projects can be made more economically viable.