Tamil Nadu govt to reward Indian students who developed KalamSat

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami announced a cash reward of Rs 10 lakh to Rifath Sharook and his team on Saturday, who developed 'KalamSat,' a 64 gram satellite that was launched by NASA.

In a suo moto statement in Assembly, Palaniswami said "to further encourage," Sharook and his team who brought laurels to India and in particular Tamil Nadu, Rs 10 lakh will be given by the government to them.

Lauding 18-year old Sharook and six other team members, he said the reward was to encourage them towards making more "achievements." He said 'KalamSat,' launched on June 22 by NASA won first prize from among 80,000 models in a competition held by the American space agency.

Sharook is a student hailing from Pallapatti in Karur District of Tamil Nadu. He and his team were aided by 'Spacekids,' an organisation promoting science, art and culture. According to Spacekids website, Kalamsat is a 3.8 cm cube satellite of 'Femto category' and weighs 64 grams. "It's structure is fully 3D printed with reinforced carbon fibre polymer in which we will be using complex carbon fibre."

Replete with a temperature and humidity sensor, a barometric pressure sensor, the tiny and "world's lightest," satellite also has a "Nano Geiger Muller counter", which will measure the radiation in outer space, it said.