Pune: Nearly eight years of hard work of 176 students of College of Engineering Pune, put in to develop the 'Swayam' satellite, would get recognition nine days from now.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) would launch the satellite at 9am on June 20 from the Sriharikota High Altitude Range. Confirming the development, the College of Engineering Pune (CoEP) officials claimed Swayam was the first pico satellite developed by students in the country.

The story of Swayam is one of vision, perseverance and hard work. Initially, Nishchay Mhatre, Abhishek Baviskar and Mohit Karve thought of building a satellite of their own. "We were approached by IIT to make a ground station for their satellite. This got us thinking. If they can make it, then why can't we? This question led the three of them making a team of students having only one motive - to have their own satellite up in space," a CoEP official said.

The team of students then gave a proposal to the decision-making body of CoEP. In January 2009, the project was approved and the work began.

"We had to start from the scratch. From basic physics like what is the altitude at which the satellite orbits to the escape velocity of the satellite. Everything was new to us and we studied really hard. We were second-year students then and we hardly knew anything about space technology," said Nishchay, a faculty of CoEP at present. Abhishek and Mohit are in the US.

The team then went to Isro, which gave a time frame to develop the satellite and reviewed the progress periodically. "In the entire endeavour, Pramod Kale, a former Isro director, IIT Bombay and Kanpur, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics and National Centre for Radiophysics helped us a lot," said M Y Khaladkar, the faculty in charge of the Student Satellite Group, CoEP.

The total total budget was around Rs 50 lakh but Khaladkar said if they were to do all of it a second time, they could make a satellite in half the amount. "Most of our money went in trial and error method. Frequent trips to various places for tests also added to the expenditure," said Khaladkar.

Swayam weighs about 1kg. Modelled in a 10x10x10 centimetre cube, it is called a pico satellite. "One of the biggest challenges was how to build a pico satellite. The second challenge was how to have sub-systems consuming less than 2W power. Third, how to stabilize it with equipment requiring least power?" he said. The satellite has solar panels on all its six faces. These panels store charge in the lithium-ion battery, charging all the systems within the satellite.

When a satellite is placed into its orbit by the launch vehicle, it tumbles and becomes unstable. Generally a system called magnetorquers is used to stabilize the satellite. But it is bulky and consumes a lot of power.

"We used a pair of hysteresis rods and a magnet to stabilize the satellite. The CoEP students devised the Passive Attitude Control System of Swayam, the first of its kind in India. It main objective is to stabilize the satellite and keep its antenna always pointed towards the earth for communication," said Khaladkar, adding that the satellite would use analog communication.

CoEP has also devised a noise cancellation software. Communication with the satellite would happen via Morse code. It would revolve six times around the earth a day. The satellite was ready in May 2015 but the launch date has been delayed. At present, students from CoEP are in Sriharikota, preparing for the launch.

Khaladkar said the precision was of utmost importance for the satellite having a tolerance of less than 0.1mm. Swayam will fit exactly in a system called INLS, which will then be mounted on the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle.

"Swayam will be launched with India's Cartosat-2, an earth observation satellite. Thirteen students' satellites would be launched that day, of which two are from India," said Khaladkar.

Nishchay said the biggest challenge apart from the technology was how to keep students motivated batch after batch. "From the onset, we made sure we passed on all the information to the next batch. This legacy has finally succeeded," said Nishchal.

Both Khaladkar and Nishchal said their anxiety would remain till the satellite was launched and started communicating. "So many things can go wrong. But we are happy that we gave start to something which we are sure will be followed up," said Nishchal



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