'AzaadiSat' to bring delight to 750 girl students

Tirupati: Within a few days, 750 young girls will have a proud moment in their life when the AzaadiSat of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) goes into orbit due to their sheer hard work. This AzaadiSat is all set for launch in next one week from SHAR, Sriharikota. This project was specially conceptualised for the Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav which is a pride for the nation and an inspiration for many girls to think about Space as their career.

The novel feature of AzaadiSat is that it is an extraordinary satellite which is an emotion of 750 girl students, most of them from rural areas from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, who are looking at the maiden launch of ISRO's Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) that is designed to orbit satellites weighing less than 500 kg in low earth orbit. IN-SPACeIND and SpaceKidz India signed a MoU for AzaadiSat on June 10, this year.

The idea is to encourage government school children especially from rural background with the basic understanding and knowledge of space and tutor them to build a small experiment and launch it to the edge of space. From the 75 government schools, 10 students of classes 8-12 were chosen from each school. Out of these three schools were chosen from AP while Narayanavanam ZP girls high schools is one among them. The other two are Dr Ambedkar Gurukulam for girls, Veeralankapalli of East Godavari district and AP Social Welfare Residential school, Kurugunta of Anantapur district.

This eight kg student satellite carries 75 miniature payloads known as 'femto experiments', a selfie camera to click pictures of its own solar panels and LoRa (Long Range Communication) transponder experiments. It will also have temperature sensors, radiation counters, an accelerometer, gyroscope etc. It will have a life of six months.

This is a unique opportunity for young girl students providing once-in-a-lifetime hands-on experience of sending a payload into space. Many of the participating rural children are first time being exposed to satellites and rockets.

In a tweet, IN-SPACe mentioned, "The 750 girl students will be cheerfully looking at the maiden launch of India's latest launch vehicle SSLV, as it carries their AzaadiSat onboard as a co-passenger".

It is expected to encourage girl students to take up STEM (Science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects as this year's UN theme is 'Women in Space,' it added. Speaking to The Hans India, in-charge of Atal Tinkering Lab at ZP girls high school, Narayanavanam K V Shyama Latha said that SpaceKidz representatives have provided all guidance to the students through zoom meetings and taught them the process of required coding.

Students Deepika and Devi Sri have said that they were asked to dump coding to Raspberry Pi board and send it back to SpaceKidz. "We are very much happy that the coding sent by us will go into space.

We are more excited to watch the experiment from SHAR very soon. It's a great opportunity for all of us which can be cherished for long," they averred.