The ’Raavana 1’ cube satellite designed and developed by two Sri Lankan engineers was launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in the 400km orbit by the Cygnus spacecraft of NASA today at 2.16 am Sri Lanka time, Director Communication Engineering (Project Manager Nano satellite projects) at Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Modern Technologies, Kavindra Jayawardena told Daily Mirror.

He said the spacecraft was launched by the rocket 'ANTRAS.'

“The spacecraft CYGNUS will be connected to ISS by April 20 and the satellite will be accepted by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency section in the ISS and deployed to 400km orbit by June 2019, using the Kibo experiment module by JAXA scientists in the ISS,” he said.

RAAVANA-1 which is a cube-seized miniature satellite and Sri Lanka's first research satellite built by two Sri Lankan youth Tharindu Dayaratne and Dulani Chamika marking our entrance into the space age.

Tharindu Dayaratne is an Electrical and Electronics engineer of the University of Peradeniya and a research engineer at the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Modern Technologies and Dulani Chamika is a Mechatronics engineer from the same institute.

The satellite which was designed and built at the Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan is 1000 cubic cm in size and weighs 1.1 kg. (Sheain Fernandopulle)

Tharindu Dayaratne and Dulani Chamika