Lessons in outerspace

Updated on: Monday, August 09, 2010

Students from four engineering colleges in Bengaluru, Nitte Meenakshi Institute of Technology (NMIT), M S Ramaiah Institute of Technology (MSRIT), RV College of Engineering (RVCE) and MNS Institute of Technology (BMSIT) were part of a project that launched the first ever Pico-satellite “STUDSAT” or student satellite.

The mentor and driving force behind the project, DVA Raghava Murthy, Project Director, Small Satellites Projects, Indian Space Research Organisa-tion (ISRO) Satellite Centre, was naturally delighted. STUDSAT weighs less than 1.5 kg and is a miniature artificial satellite (picosat). What made the feat more special was that this is the first time in India that a picosat with an imaging camera has been designed, fabricated, and built by students — of course under the watchful eye of scientists from ISRO. The main objective of the satellite is to perform remote sensing, and capture images of the surface of the earth which will be used for vegetation and terrain mapping.

Among the students was the project’s core member G. Kartik from NMIT; Thimmaiah K, a student of RVCE, who was involved with the project from January 2009 (this was when the country’s first pico-satellite project team was formed as a consortium with about 40 under-graduates from four engineering colleges from Karnataka and three from Andhra Pradesh); Ragha-vendra S and Vigneshwaran K from BMSIT — core members of the ‘On Board Computers’ which monitor the entire satellite and Avinash and Kishan from MSRIT apart from several others who also contributed to the success of the venture.

Way to go!

Lessons in outerspace

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