A copy of the Bhagavad Gita, a photo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the names of 25,000 individuals will be carried to space on a Satish Dhawan Satellite (SD SAT), which will be launched by a polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV), Hindustan Times reported. The launch is scheduled for the end of this month. 

The nanosatellite, named after one of Indian space programmes’ founding fathers and developed by SpaceKidz India, which is an organisation that promotes space science among students, will carry three scientific payloads. Of the three payloads, one will study space radiation, one will study magnetosphere and another that will illustrate a low-power wide-area communication network.

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Dr Srimathy Kesan, founder and CEO of SpaceKidz India said that, “there is a lot of excitement in the team and it will be our first satellite deployed in space. When we finalised the mission, we asked people to send in their names that will be sent to space. And, just within a week, 25,000 entries were received. 1,000 names were of the people outside India. It was done so that it will spark interest of the people in mission and space science.” according to a report in Hindustan Times. The people who sent in their names were given a “boarding pass”.

Kesan said that they decided to send a copy of the Bhagavad Gita to space just like other space missions which have carried holy books such as Bible in the past. In addition to that, we have also added a photo of the PM on the top panel with the words of Indian government’s latest project ‘Atmanirbhar mission’ written on it. She reiterated that the satellite has been completely developed and fabricated in India, including electronics and circuitry, in line with the Atmanirbhar mission.  

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In addition to that, the names of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief Dr K Sivan and scientific secretary Dr R Umamaheswaran have been added on the bottom panel.

Satellite will be sent to the spaceport at Sriharikota on Sunday after some design changes were made after recommendations from ISRO. SpaceKidz CEO added that, “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 bulge on a few cells. But it was thought that the entire thing might ooze out in space in 2-3 days.”

This is one of those satellites which are developed by Indian startups that will be launched for the first time by ISRO after India opened up the space department to private entities in June last year.

The PSLV-C51 mission, which is scheduled for February 28, will also carry Brazil’s earth observation satellite Amazonia-1 as the primary satellite along with 20 other satellites, including a nanosatellite from ISRO, three UnitySats by an academic consortium and a demonstration satellite by another start-up Pixxel, as per the reports from Hindustan Times.

Pixxel plans to create a constellation of 30 earth observation satellites by December 2022 that will provide global coverage every 24 hours.