Modi Hails Odisha Students For Designing the Kalam Satellite

New Delhi: Students of Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology (VSSUT) at Burla in Sambalpur have come in for praise from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the successful launch of the KALAM SAT, a communication satellite named after former President Abdul Kalam.

Modi hailed the students achievement, saying that India’s space program has been possible due to innumerable young scientists of the country.

“We take pride in the fact that the satellites developed by our students and Sounding Rockets have reached space. On 24th January ‘KALAM SAT’ fashioned by our students had been launched. The Sounding Rockets made by Odisha university students have also created many records,” the PM said during his monthly Mann Ki Baat radio programme.

He said the number of successful space missions attempted since the country’s independence till 2014 have been equal to those successfully completed in the past four years. India has also created a world record for launching 104 satellites simultaneously from the same spacecraft, he added.

Students of the VSSUT are known for developing, launching and recovering indigenously developed reusable satellites and rockets. They have also made it to the Limca Book of Records as the only students body in India which have developed and launched a sounding rocket.

According to Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), sounding rockets are one or two stage solid propellant rockets used for probing the upper atmospheric regions and for space research. They also serve as easily affordable platforms to test or prove prototypes of new components or subsystems intended for use in launch vehicles and satellites.