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An Indian teenager has built what is thought could be the world's lightest satellite, which will be put into orbit at a Nasa[sic] facility in the US in June.
Rifath Shaarook's 64-gram (0.14 lb) device was selected as the winner in a competition co-sponsored by Nasa[sic]. The 18-year-old says its main purpose was to demonstrate the performance of 3-D printed carbon fibre.
Rifath told local media his invention will go on a four-hour mission for a sub-orbital flight. During that time, the lightweight satellite will operate for around 12 minutes in a micro-gravity environment of space.
"We designed it completely from scratch," he said. "It will have a new kind of on-board computer and eight indigenous built-in sensors to measure acceleration, rotation and the magnetosphere of the earth."
We need more competitions like this that encourage young people in science, and we need the media to make a bigger deal about it.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday May 17 2017, @02:58AM
It's a lot like that kid who "built" a clock (that looked like a bomb) or "built" the computer (like every other kid and his mom did).
There are a few suppositions I'd like to make, though -- the first is that this kid had the luxury of at least one toilet in his house (and is fattened appropriately), the second is that he is using off-the-shelf sensor boards and that the only "indigenous" component is a couple layers of breadboard bridging the components based on the image, the third is that he has mistook the term "carbon fiber" for "PVC filament," and the fourth is that any kind of programming on the board was performed by somebody else (probably dad).