The students of the Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Technology for Women here are building a small satellite for studying ultraviolet radiation and its impacts.
If everything falls into place, WESAT, short for ‘Women Engineered SATellite,’ will be launched aboard a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) later this year.
A project of the institute’s Space Club, the ‘nanosatellite’ weighing 1 kg is billed as the country’s first satellite to be designed fully under the supervision of women.
The institute has inked an agreement with the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) for launching WESAT as a co-passenger satellite. IN-SPACe serves a single-window agency for all space sector activities of private entities.
The nanosatellite will be used to measure UV rays in space and the earth’s surface and their influence on the warm temperatures and climate change phenomena in Kerala, according to the institute.
The payload design was finalised by the students after three years of hard work, Lizy Abraham, Assistant Professor, Space Club coordinator and Principal Investigator of the satellite project, said. As part of the project, the institute has completed the construction of a ground monitoring station, which is now operational.
