18-Year-Old From Tamil Nadu Invents World’s Lightest Satellite And Now NASA Is Launching It!

India, in my humble opinion, is the land of child prodigies. Remember the 14-year-old kid, who sold a drone for 5 Cr to the Gujarat Government? Or Akrit Jaswal, the genius who performed his first surgery at 7? The list is long…and endless.

While I am already approaching my midlife crisis, an 18-year-old is going down in history books for helping mankind, society and the world of science. (Seriously, what am I doing with my life?)

Meet, Rifath Shaarook, an 18-year-old who just invented the world’s lightest satellite, weighing ONLY 64 grams! He will create a global space record when his satellite called the KalamSat, will be launched by NASA on June 21.

Rifath was a find of the competition ‘Cubes in Space’ that is hosted by NASA and an organisation called ‘I Doodle Learning’.

 

And that’s not the only record for Rifath. He is the first Indian student whose experiment will be launched by NASA. It will be launched by sounding rocket from Wallops Island. Rifath talks about his invention and explains-

“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.”

Hailing from a small village called Pallapatti in Tamil Nadu, a village that is relatively unknown; this boy makes something so great, that the world would know him.

People of the country are not only proud of you for breaking world records like this, but also because the name of your satellite is also a dedication to Late Dr. Kalam. That says a lot about you and us as a country.

Kudos, Rifath!

News Source: Times of India