NASA launched the world’s smallest satellite designed by Tamil Nadu students in 2017; It is not a recent incident - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
March 26, 2022
A photo is being shared on social media claiming that NASA has recently launched the world’s smallest satellite designed by Tamil Nadu’s 18-year-old student Rifath Farooq. This post claims that this 64-gram light-weighted satellite was named ‘Kalamsat’, after the late Former President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam. Sharing a picture of the students, this post accuses all mainstream media channels of turning a blind eye on India’s achievement in rocket & space technology and being busy promoting ‘The Kashmir Files’ movie. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: NASA recently launched the world’s smallest satellite designed by Tamil Nadu students.
Fact: NASA launched the world’s smallest satellite designed by Tamil Nadu students in 2017. Rifath Shaarook and his team designed this light-weight satellite using 3D printing technology. The photo shows Rifath Farooq and his team rejoicing the success of their satellite launch in 2017. This incident has nothing to do with the recently released ‘The Kashmir Files’ movie. Hence, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
On reverse image search of the photo shared in the post, the same photo was found tweeted by the ‘ANI’ on 22 June 2017. ‘ANI’ reported it as the pictures of Tamil Nadu students rejoicing the launch of their 64-gram weighted world’s smallest satellite by NASA. News 18’ had also tweeted the same photo with a similar description.
Chennai: Students who built the world's smallest satellite, rejoice after its launch. The satellite weighing 64 grams was launched by NASA. pic.twitter.com/ak7NP9KzUO
Reporting this achievement of the Tamil Nadu students in rocket and space technology, several news channels published articles and videos in 2017. They can be seen here, here and here. According to these news reports, on 21 June 2017, NASA launched the world’s smallest satellite designed by Tamil Nadu student Rifath Shaarook and his team. The 64-gram light-weight satellite was named ‘Kalamsat’, after the Former President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam. Rifath Shaarook designed the structure of this satellite completely with 3D printed and reinforced carbon fibre polymer. The main purpose of this 64-gram weighted satellite is to demonstrate the performance of 3D carbon fibre.
A few interviews of Rifathh Shaarook after the successful launch of his mini satellite in 2017 can be seen here and here. From all these pieces of evidence, it can be concluded that NASA had launched the world’s smallest satellite designed by Rifath Shaarook in 2017 and it has nothing to do with the recently released ‘The Kashmir Files’ movie.
To sum it up, the 2017 incident of NASA launching of the world’s smallest satellite designed by Tamil Nadu students linked to ‘The Kashmir Files’ movie.