Here's the cool part, it was developed by an 18-year-old Indian teen!
child prodigies and super genius youngsters are nothing new to India's massively growing super culture. From a 7-year-old performing surgery to an 8-year-old with a memory like Google, India is arguably the World leader in youth creativity and intelligence by a long-shot.
This time, the product of an Indian genius child is about to be launched into space by NASA.
Rifath Sharook from Pallapatti town in Tamilnadu, India, has developed the worlds smallest satellite. Weighing a mere 64 grams, Rifath's satellite, named ‘KalamSat’, named after Indian nuclear scientist and former President, APJ Abdul Kalam, is to be launched into orbit on June 21. This marks the first time NASA will implement an Indian student’s experiment into sub-orbital space flight, and probably won't be the last.
The itty bitty satellite, made from reinforced carbon fibre polymer, is not only the smallest satellite ever made, but is also the 1st of it's kind to be 3D printed.
Sharook's project was the winner of the 'Cubes in Space' http://www.cubesinspace.com/ contest sponsored by I Doodle Learning Organization and NASA.
The entire "mission" phase of the project will last 240 minutes, in which the satellite will operate for 12 minutes in an extremely low gravity environment before it plummets back to Earth and splashes into the ocean.
The purpose of this project is to give motivation to plan economical space missions in future. Especially those as the result of 3D printed materials.
Sharook was quoted saying “The main role of the satellite will be to demonstrate the performance of 3-D printed carbon fibre.”
Pretty cool stuff!
Stay steemy my friends!