Last week, after a powerful earthquake struck South Asia, killing more than 390 people, I began to wonder why it is so difficult to predict this particular type of natural disaster. In this age of innovation when one can put a rover on Mars, millions of miles away, send self-driving cars on roads and print fighter jet parts through 3D printing, predicting earthquakes remains an unfulfilled challenge.

In fact, data wiz Nate Silver dedicated one whole chapter to earthquake prediction in his book The Signal and the Noise and says it has remained a mirage all along despite huge leaps in the computational processes. He even quotes from the website of the science bureau USGS, which says, “Neither the USGS nor any other scientists have ever predicted a major earthquake.”

It is this background that makes an attempt by a group of students at the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras hugely interesting. They are developing a satellite that they say will further advance and validate a new method to predict earthquakes from outer space.

They say it could possibly lead to providing warning as much as 48 hours to four hours in advance of major quakes. The cube-shaped satellite with an edge of 30 cm can be transported in a suitcase and is expected to be launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation next year. It would collect data and have a mission life of one year.

"We will deliver it by May," says Akshay Gulati, 25-year-old project officer for the IITMSAT project. "We are actually designing a suitcase for it."

How is it going to be different from technologies we have known so far? This technology of forecasting is based on the discovery that electromagnetic waves that get emitted from Earth before an earthquake begin to change the behavior of particles in the two donuts of seething radiation that surround Earth. The trick is to the put the satellite between these radiation belts — named after the American space scientist Van Allen — and the Earth, 600 km-800 km above it.

"When they resonate, the signal gets amplified, the aim is to pick up that signal," Dr Krishna Chivukula, founder of Indo-US MIM, a Bengaluru-based supplier of precision-engineered products, who is backing the students with funding along with IIT-Madras, told me.

But, let’s be clear, it isn’t easy as it seems. The Earth keeps emitting signals all the time, because of lightning, solar flares or a storm. The technology developed by the students is designed to enable the satellite to have so much resolution that it can collect and transmit data about electrons and protons in the Earth's upper atmosphere called ionosphere.

"Quakes are happening on Earth every day," says Chivukula. "If we are able to detect and say there are 90 percent chances of it happening in a particular region, I think we will do a great service."

Earthquakes have been primarily been investigated by Earth-based sensors, which experts say are not good enough. Looking to the space in the hope of predicting an earthquake is also not a new idea. US-space agency NASA's very first small explorer SAMPEX, launched in July 1992, was based on this premise.

"Though it did not have a good resolution, it still was able to detect certain spikes in particles, some of which are present during earthquakes," says Gulati. Post that launch, not enough data is available in the field, and the IIT-Madras students identified an opportunity to work on it.

However, the government of Japan, a country which has had a long history of earthquakes and seismic activity, is sceptical about this approach and has not invested enough to prove this method. "Some Japanese scientists told us that what we are doing is science fiction, they are sceptical," says Gulati.

World over, there are a few other attempts on similar lines. California-based company QuakeFinder has already launched QuakeSat, an earth observation nano-satellite. It was designed to be a proof-of-concept for space-based detection of signals, thought to be earthquake precursor signals. DEMETER, a French micro-satellite, was launched in June 2004 to investigate the disturbance in the upper Earth due to seismic and volcanic activity. Its scientific operations ended in December 2010.

"The secret sauce of our satellite is that it will have a very good resolution where it can measure electrons and protons," says Gulati, who will calibrate the satellite's instrument in a high energy particle facility at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Mumbai and Inter-University Accelerator Centre in Delhi.

The question about whether one can predict earthquakes by the electromagnetic signals emitted by rocks under stress has been intensely debated by seismologists for several years. Scientists claim the atmosphere above Japan underwent unusual changes in the days leading up to one of the largest earthquakes and the worst in Japan's history in March 2011. There is also a belief for centuries that animals and birds can predict earthquakes. Historians have recorded that in 373 BC, just days before a quake devastated the Greek city of Helice, weasels, snakes and rats moved out the place in large numbers.

Gulati a mechanical engineering graduate from IIT-Madras, calls his project an exploratory mission. "We are doing it for the first time, you don't want to expect." He first was inspired by the thought of building a satellite after watching the film October Sky, based on the true story of Homer H. Hickam, Jr. A coal miner's son, Hickam was inspired by the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957 and took to the world of rocket-science, against his father's wishes. He eventually became a NASA engineer.

"I also wanted to something out of the world and not a regular job," says Gulati. He initially tried to make his own small rockets that could fly 10 km above the Earth but gave up the idea after realizing that there are regulations to launch rockets in the country.

Six years ago, Gulati decided to build an earthquake satellite along with his friends after a brainstorming session with them. By that time he had already got some flavour about building satellites after a stint at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai. There, he and his friend did some work on Astrosat, India’s first space observatory. The satellite is a miniature version of the Hubble, a telescope in space (as long as a large school bus) that helps scientists understand the universe and how planets, stars and galaxies form.

Gulati has a team of 50 students including a core team of five people. The total project cost is Rs 3 crore, with most of the grant coming from Chivukula. IIT-Madras, besides having invested the initial seed grant, is supporting the project in terms of infrastructure, technical advice and administrative support. Specific inputs are also coming from ISRO.

"This kind of project needs money and a lot of patience," says Chivukula. An alumnus of IIT-Bombay and Harvard University, he has already founded a couple of tech companies. He decided to back this, despite knowing that the odds are stacked against it. "The next big earthquake is going to happen in India," he says. "Imagine the lives you can change, buildings will collapse but at least the people won't die."