In 2019, I had a very inspiring flat mate in Singapore. He is one of the youngest people in India to lead a team building a near-space micro-satellite.

Sanket Deshpande is now a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and develops hardware for quantum computing and networking. As an undergraduate, he studied physics and electrical engineering at BITS-Pilani in India. In college, he spent most of his time outside the classroom working on projects that fascinated him. He helped build an affordable Braille learning device, which is now known as Annie from Thinkerbell Labs (you’ve probably seen it on Shark Tank India). He headed Project Apeiro, India’s first student-led near-space microsatellite mission. He was also a part of ‘Hyperloop India’ team that was a finalist at the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition, where he met Elon Musk in person. His journey of sending a student-made satellite into space involved out-of-the-box thinking and innovation that was a stratum beyond his age.

Sanket grew up in Aurangabad, India. Both his parents are doctors.

He says, ‘While my parents would have liked me to become a medical doctor, they never stopped me from pursuing my interest in physics and engineering.’

He wanted to create something new. He wanted to make something that would go into space, ‘the final frontier’, and not stay on the ground. To reach this goal he had to explore many ideas before arriving at something great.

He recalls, ‘As an eighteen-year-old first-year college student who wanted to make something, we had absolutely no idea how to go about it. So, we tried to see the ISRO [Indian Space Research Organisation] student space missions, but it turned out that ISRO’s timelines for a rocket launch were way too long.’

Most student satellite projects of other universities were multigenerational; they took nearly five years to complete, which was longer than Sanket’s undergraduate degree. Sanket and his team were too impatient to wait that long. They wanted to create something that mattered, and they wanted to do it quickly.

They thought of many wild space-related project ideas that they could develop independently.

First, they thought of sending up a camera to take images and make earth observations, but there were many regulations around deploying cameras. Also, a lot had already been done in this field and this wouldn’t have led to any new science.

The second idea was that they could relay satellites. This involves sending information to a satellite, which then relays it to someone on the other side of the planet. As undergraduates, they felt they could do something newer and more unique.

Their third idea was inspired by work of NASA Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE). GRACE measures changes in the local pull of gravity as water shifts around Earth due to changing seasons, weather and climate processes. It does this by deploying a pair of satellites orbiting the earth and separated by 220 km in space. However, this project turned out to be very technologically challenging for a team of undergrad students.

Finally, they stumbled on a critical challenge faced by astronauts and global space missions: cosmic rays. The main challenge of long-term space missions is cosmic ray exposure. Cosmic rays are high-energy particles that are known to be carcinogenic when humans are exposed to them for long periods. Even the electronics that go into space are prone to errors caused by cosmic rays. The challenge was so pertinent that their project could impact humanity and the future of space travel.

They thought it would be more purposeful to identify materials that could shield the capsules and astronauts from cosmic rays.

Therefore, they chose to develop a device that could compare the shielding ability of various materials against cosmic rays. They wanted to test aluminium and high-density polyethylene as a potential shield from cosmic rays.

Unfortunately, soon the team realized a fundamental flaw. To extract any meaningful data, they would require at least a 20-metre layer of aluminium and polyethylene – which is simply not possible for a space mission due to the size and weight constraints. They had to pivot, and they had to pivot quick.

Local resources and guidance were lacking. So, they tried to figure things out on their own and studied various cosmic-ray experiments happening worldwide.

Eventually, they came across a NASA mission that was developing a model for predicting cosmic ray exposure during commercial aircraft travel. Inspired by this mission, they decided to build an instrument to measure cosmic ray flux incident on earth from outer space.

Their instrument would measure cosmic ray flux at two different altitudes—something that had never been done in India before. This was possible due to the flight control experts at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Hyderabad.

Sanket recalls, ‘We were stupid and naïve. We thought if the math says it can work, then it must. So, instead of using expensive machines, we bought cheaper substitutes from eBay to put them together and make things work.’

Most of Sanket’s learning in aerospace came from failing.

The team often thought they would be able to launch on a particular date, but then something would blow up and they would have to postpone it. A few days before their final launch date, their data acquisition board (the device’s CPU) blew up in an electromagnetic radiation test. The shielding wasn’t excellent, so the crucial component of the device failed. To stick with the launch date, overnight, they hand-soldered everything, and the next day they did all the tests. Luckily, everything worked.

Their launch was finally a success.

Sanket reflects that, ‘People have standard practices and ideas in engineering, and usually don’t want to try out new things. We had no option but to use first-principles and try out new things.’

Now Sanket is pursuing his PhD from the University of Wisconsin in a field that he failed classes in during his undergraduate programme. ‘I had a D grade in my quantum mechanics courses in college. My professors were disappointed in me for sleepwalking through their courses. Today, I am a student leader for a US-government funded centre for developing quantum computers. Nothing really stops you from doing what you like,’ he says.

(Manthan Shah is a 22-year old podcaster, athlete and Schwarzman Scholar. This excerpt from his book is extracted with permission from Penguin Random House India)

About the Book

Unstoppable: How To Be Successful In South Asia

Manthan Shah

Penguin Random House India

256 pages; Rs 256 (paperback)

Check out the book here

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW