A photograph of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, and the names of 25,000 individuals will be carried to space by the Satish Dhawan Satellite which will be launched at the end of the month by the polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV), reported Hindustan Times.
“There is a lot of excitement in the group right now. This will be our first satellite to be deployed in space. When we finalised the mission, we asked people to send in their names that will be sent to space,” Dr. Srimathy Kesan, founder and CEO of SpaceKidz India told HT.
“And, within a week we received 25,000 entries. Of these, 1,000 names were sent in by people from outside India. There is a school in Chennai that sent in the names of everyone. We decided to do this because it will spark the interest of the people in the mission and space science,” he added.
The people who sent in their names were given a “boarding pass”.
Kesan told HT that they decided to send a copy of the Bhagvad Gita to space on the lines of other space missions that have carried holy books such as the Bible. “We have also added the name and photograph of the prime minister on the top panel with the words Atmanirbhar mission. This satellite has been completely developed and fabricated in India, including the electronics and circuitry,” she said.
The satellite will be transported on Sunday to the spaceport at Sriharikota after some design changes were made following recommendations by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). “We are conducting last-minute checks before sending over the satellite. We had to re-do the solar panel on the satellites after testing at ISRO because there was a problem with the resin and there was a bulge on a few cells. But it was thought that the entire thing might ooze out in space in two to three days,” Kesan told HT.
