Meet the Indian teen who has developed world's smallest satellite for Nasa

KalamSat, developed by Tamil Nadu's Rifath Sharook, will be launched by Nasa rocket on June 21

When the US’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) launches the world’s smallest satellite KalamSat on June 21, it will be the first time ever that it would be piloting an experiment by an Indian student. Developed by Rifath Sharook, an 18-year-old boy, from Tamil Nadu’s Pallapatti town, KalamSat weighs only 64 grammes.

‘KalamSat’, named after India's nuclear scientist and former President, APJ Abdul Kalam, will be launched from a Nasa facility in Wallops Island. Sharook’s project, the first to be manufactured via 3D printing, got selected through a competition, ‘Cubes in Space', sponsored jointly by NASA and 'I Doodle Learning'. The project aims to take the performance of new technology to space.

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Key features of the miniature satellite

Sharook said it would be a sub-orbital flight and after launch the mission span would be 240 minutes. The tiny satellite would operate for 12 minutes in a micro-gravity environment of space. “The main role of the satellite will be to demonstrate the performance of 3D-printed carbon fibre”, the Times of India quoted Sharook as saying. Read more

Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson and ex-NASA scientist, Kanubhai dies at 87

Mahatma Gandhi's grandson Kanubhai Gandhi passed away on Monday at a private hospital here, where he was admitted about two weeks back following a heart attack. He was 87.

Kanubhai, the son of Mahatma's third son Ramdas Gandhi, along with his wife Shivalaxmi, had been living at an accommodation at the Radha Krishna temple run by Punjabi Samaj here for the last three months.

He was admitted to the hospital on October 22 after he suffered a heart attack. He was put on life support as he had also suffered a paralysis attack.

"Kanubhai died at 8.30 pm today at a Surat hospital," his close friend Dhimant Badhiya said.

"Doctors had said that he had also suffered a lung failure in the last few days," Kanubhai's caretaker and a member of Punjabi Samaj, Kailash Chhabra, told PTI.

Kanubhai, a former NASA scientist who was famously captured in a photograph pulling Mahatma Gandhi's walking stick as he led the Salt Satyagraha at Dandi in Gujarat, had come back to India in 2014 after living in the US for over four decades.

A graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Kanubhai also worked with the US Defense Department on the wing structure of fighter aircraft. He had decided to spend the rest of his life in India, along with his wife.

"After staying in the US for over four decades, Kanubhai wanted to spend his last days in his own country, which is why he came here, along with his wife, as he had no child. He stayed at different places in Delhi, Wardha and Nagpur, before coming to Surat three months back," Badhiya said.Read more

NASA denies it is changing Zodiacal signs

NASA denies it is changing Zodiacal signs

Refuting claims that it is updating the astrological signs, NASA has said that it did not do it as the space agency studies astronomy not astrology.

"We did not change any Zodiac signs, we just did the math. The Space Place (an educational page for kids run by NASA) article was about how astrology is not astronomy, how it was a relic of ancient history and pointed out the science and math that did come from observations of the night sky," NASA spokesperson Dwayne Brown told Gizmodo.

Last week a news spread that 86 per cent of the people now have a different star sign as NASAhad decided to update the astrological signs for the first time in 2,000 years.

In NASA's educational page for children called Space Place, the agency discussed how, some 3,000 years ago, the ancient Babylonians were keen sky-watchers and thought that the changing positions of constellations throughout the year could be linked to certain behaviours or events on Earth.

As a result of this, those sky-watchers invented the zodiac.

"So, as Earth orbits the Sun, the Sun would appear to pass through each of the 12 parts of the zodiac. Since the Babylonians already had a 12-month calendar (based on the phases of the Moon), each month got a slice of the zodiac all to itself," Science Alert reported on Monday citing the article in Space Place.

But seeing as this happened 3,000 years ago, things were a bit arbitrary, and for whatever reason, the Babylonians left a constellation out of their zodiac -- Ophiuchus, the report said.(more)