Indian students design satelite set for launch

A team of engineering students from southern India is designing a small light-weight satellite that is set to be sent into space soon. The Indian Space Research Organization is supporting the project in the hope that it will encourage more students to be more interested in space technology.

About 40 students, mostly engineering under-graduates from seven top colleges in Bangalore and Hyderabad, have opted to work long hours in a hi-tech lab at the Nitte Meenakshi Institute of Technology in Bangalore.

Coming together as a team under the guidance of the research organization, the students hope to build one of the smallest satellites ever designed. It will be used for remote-sensing applications.

Shwetha, Engineering Student and Team member, said, "It is basically a PICO satellite , a satellite which is less than 1kg in weight, in dimension of 10x10x10 centimetres. So we have to incorporate all the necessities or the requirements of a satellite into this cube-sat, cube-sat standards.The major payload here is a camera, which will be taking images of around 90 meter resolution. These images will be used for any remote-sensing applications."