NASA has launched world’s lightest satellite weighing only 64 grams designed by 18-year-old boy Rifath Sharook from Tamil Nadu.
The tiny satellite has been named as KalamSat after the former President APJ Abdul Kalam.
The tiny satellite was launched into space on a sounding rocket from NASA’s facility in Wallops Island.
Salient Facts
KalamSat is a 3-D printed satellite. This is the first time that 3-D printing technology is used to make satellites.
To participate in NASA’s contest Cubes in Space in partnership with the global education company, I Doodle Learning, Sharook and his team had designed a 1 kg CubeSat.
But as the CubSat was costly the group made a smaller version for the contest and came up with ‘KalamSat’. By using the concept called BalloonSats, the group created a Near Space Launch Vehicle (NSLV) to launch KalamSat.
BalloonSats are designed to carry lightweight experiments into near-space. The tiny satellite weighs only 64 grams which is lighter than a smartphone. The satellite has been made of reinforced carbon fibre polymer.
The satellite was operated for 12 minutes in a micro-gravity environment of space after its flight. The purpose behind the launch of KalamSat was to demonstrate the performance of 3D-printed carbon fibre.
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