Hindustan Times, Mumbai, While most students at the Indian Institute of Technology- Bombay (IIT-B) campus enjoyed their weekend off, for ten students it was filled with nervous anticipation. They are working on Pratham, India’s first student satellite project. In its final testing phase, the students have now created a virtual simulation of space to see if the satellite systems work. Once it passes this test, the satellite will be ready for launch. But on Sunday, halfway through the test, there was a glitch
and the team is back at work. “We will resolve the glitch and run the test again,” said Johnny Jha, project manager of Pratham. The project has seen its shares of glitches and the disillusionment that follows, but the team stuck on and today, after four years, Pratham is IIT-B’s longest-running student project. “There have been some difficult times. We were the first student satellite in the country and after us five more projects started, of which one was launched too, and everyone on campus talked about it and asked us where our project was going,” added Jha. Pratham was the brainchild of two students — Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay and Shashank Tamaskar — who are now pursing PhDs in the US. They mentored their juniors to take over the project after they passed out. “Pratham is the only initiative that has been passed on from batch to batch. So, even the attrition rate is high where new students join it for a few weeks and then leave,” said Sanyam Mulay, who has worked on Pratham for the past three years and referred to as Satellite on campus. Pratham will record the electron count of the ionosphere, which can be used for tsunami alerts and also to increase the accuracy of Global Positioning System in India.Read Full: IIT-B readies to go into orbit - Hindustan Times
