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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: 3, Touché) by DECbot on Wednesday May 17 2017, @03:33AM
By no means am I a member of any standards body, but I'd like to argue that no object is a satellite unless it is able to reach terminal velocity during reentry. Objects that generate lift or thrust during reentry can also be satellites if they would reach terminal velocity when falling from the same height in a vacuum or if their thrust was not present.
So, by my definition, your example of a person leaping off of the ground could not be called a satellite unless he jumped from a cliff large enough that he reaches terminal velocity prior to demonstrating Newton's 3rd law of motion.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base