THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The students of the Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Technology for Women (LBSITW) in Thiruvananthapuram are constructing a satellite to study ultraviolet radiation and its impacts.
The young engineers from LBSITW have named the satellite ‘WESAT,’ Women Engineered Satellite.
It is scheduled to be launched aboard a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) later this year.
This ‘nano-satellite,’ weighing 1 kg, is hailed as the country’s first satellite designed entirely under the supervision of women. The institute has signed an agreement with the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre (IN-SPACE) to launch WESAT as a co-passenger satellite.
IN-SPACE serves as a single-window agency for all space sector activities of private entities.
According to LBSITW, the nanosatellite will be used to measure UV rays in space and on Earth’s surface, studying their influence on local temperatures and climate change phenomena in Kerala.
It took the students three years to construct the Space Club. The payload design was developed by the students under the guidance of Assistant Professor Lizy Abraham, who also serves as the Space Club coordinator and Principal Investigator of the satellite project, WESAT, as reported to the media.
As part of the project, the institute has completed the construction of a ground monitoring station, which is now operational
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