Pratham, the student satellite of IIT Bombay, has ventured into space today. The Quint joined the lift off live with members of the core team at the Powai campus, while the satellite was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh.
See the complete FB lives and related coverage below:
In our LIVE Facebook chat, the students who were an integral part of this project told us all about their learnings, failures, and the excitement of each big milestone.
Conceptualized in 2008, Pratham came into being with the aim of making the institute a center for space science and technology research. It’s mission is:
1. Acquiring knowledge in the field of satellite and space technology
2. Have the satellite entirely designed by the student body of IIT Bombay
3. Have the satellite launched, measure TEC of the Ionosphere above India and Paris
4. Involve students from other universities in our satellite project space, the project will become a complete success (100%).
The life of this mission is 4 months. The satellite is designed to fit within a cube of 30 cm side and weighs nearly 10 kg.
As far as the relevance of the satellite to the student community goes, data will be transmitted when the satellite passes over India, so that any interested university with a small ground station will not only be able to detect the beacon signal from it, but will also be able to measure TEC above their ground station.
The project presents a wonderful learning experience to the students of working on a real life multidisciplinary complex system.
Pratham has been entirely funded by IIT Bombay. ISRO provided the team with technical help, testing facilities and guidance. The integration of the satellite’s flight model and its testing has been done in ISAC, Bangalore and SHAR, Sriharikota.
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