‘Space is one family’: The inclusive team behind India’s latest satellite launch

At the end of this month, a nano satellite built indigenously by an inclusive team of young Indian science students will blast off into space carrying a portrait of prime minister Narendra Modi, a copy of the Hindu religious scripture Bhagavad Gita, and the names of 25,000 people. 

The lead scientist behind the project is a man named Rifath Shaarook, a 22-year-old physics grad who spoke toThe Independent about the mission that seeks to inspire a younger generation to build up India’s footprint in space technology, currently out of reach for millions in the country.

“We decided to send the Bhagavad Gita to honour its principles ofVasudhaiva Kutumbakam. The world may be divided into borders but space has no border,” said Mr Shaarook, who was also part of the team that helped launch the world’s smallest satellite into space in 2017. Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam is a Sankrit phrase that translates as “the entire world is one family”. 

“Many people may choose to see it (sending the Bhagavad Gita into space) from a religious point of view, but for us, it’s not religious. I am a Muslim and I don’t see any religious point of view in this,” he said. Since previous international lunar missions have already taken the Bible to space and the UAE announced in 2019 it would send the Quran there as well, Mr Shaarook said, “what other country will send the Bhagavad Gita?”

The 25-member team behind the new nano satellite includes members as young as 18 years old, many of them still students. The project is being led by mission director Dr Srimathy Kesan, founder and chief executive of SpaceKidz India, an NGO that creates international experiential learning for students in the field of science, technology, art, and culture.

The Satish Dhawan Satellite, or SD SAT, an experimental communication satellite that Mr Shaarook says was entirely built in India, will be launched on 28 February by the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV) at Sriharikota in southern Andhra Pradesh state. It’s named after a renowned Indian mathematician and aerospace engineer. 

The picture of Mr Modi was added to honour his campaign for an “Atmanirbhar Bharat”, or self-reliant India, Mr Shaarook said. It’s a concept that is also important to the NGO: though it works closely with state-owned ISRO, it hopes to see India’s space industry grow to become self-sustaining.

“Getting into space research is very hard, and sometimes even I have felt, when things go wrong, why [did] I get into this?” he said. “There is no right guidance about how to get into the space industry. And that is what we are planning to educate hundreds of students to figure out how they can get into the space industry,” he said. 

Among the many challenges is procuring funds for research. “If you’re investing in a food delivery app, you can get funds easily. But in space, it is very hard, figuring out who is the customer, what is the business plan, and it will take a long time to implement the business. Many private sector companies are still waiting to invest in space. Now, many people are showing interest... But still, we have a long way to go,” Mr Shaarook said.

India, whose space programme started in the 1960s, has built a reputation recently for providing relatively affordable space launches, most notably pioneering an unmanned Mars orbiter mission in 2014 at the cost of just $74m,one tenth of the cost of Nasa’s Maven mission to Mars. 

India was the fourth country after the US, Russia and Europe to have successfully reached Mars. Last year it approved its third lunar mission after Chandrayaan-2, its second, was unable to land a rover on the lunar surface. 

Mr Shaarook said the philosophy behind India’s space capability was that it should be people-oriented. “We think about building satellites and building rockets, which can be useful for the common people. As a nation we already have launch capability, we are launching for other people also. So, for a country like India, where the population is very high, and per capita income is low, becoming a superpower in the space industry” is significant achievement, he said. 

There wasn’t much awareness about nano satellites when Mr Shaarook started work in this field and for many, space was a distant dream. In 2017, Nasa launched the KalamSat, built by Mr Shaahrook and his team of seven. It was the world’s smallest satellite weighing 64 grams, and named after former Indian president APJ Abdul Kalam. Mr Shahrook, who was all of 18 years of age at the time, told the media that the main role of the 3D printed satellite would be to demonstrate the performance of 3D-printed carbon fibre. 

SD SAT’s payload, he said, consists of a radiation counter which will study space radiation, as well as a tool to study the Earth’s magnetosphere and a LoRa (long range) transponder which will serve as end-to-end communication.

The idea is to promote local tech, he explains. “We’re expecting a lot of people to get into satellites. We don’t import any components, we want to fabricate everything here in India. So, we are doing a technology demonstration. The entire satellite is made locally,” he said. 

When Curiosity rover was launched in 2011, Mr Shahrook was a school student. It inspired him to get into the space industry. In2019, Nasa called for the public to send their names, stencilled on chips, to be launched off to Mars with its 2020 rover. It also served as an inspiration for SD SAT’s “boarding passes” for 25,000 citizens to space.

“We wanted to introduce that culture here so students in India can get inspired,” he said.