Engineering students at the Trinity College of Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram have taken up an innovative project - to develop a student satellite called TASSAT. The TASSAT stands for Trinity Adrak Student Satellite; with Oman based company 'Al Adrak' as the main sponsor of the project. The student-professor team is aiming to complete the project with a functional prototype by 2018. As the final year students working on the project graduate, the team will include juniors from the college to keep the team size intact.
The city of Thiruvananthapuram has several divisions of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) along with the Vikram Sarabhai Space Center which is responsible for launching majority of the ambitious ISRO missions. This apparently has influenced the local engineering talent. Arun Surendran, the strategic director of Trinity College said that they visited Nanyang Technological University (NTU) at Singapore to understand the feasibility of the TASSAT project.
Trinity Team at Nanyang University [ Photo Credit: Facebook]
The NTU has been using ISRO facilities to launch satellites using PSLV and they have a similar, sustainable program at their campus. Surendran aims to have similar project at his college that would allow for continuous creation of CubeSats and NanoSats.
The project is expected to see contribution from various engineering departments at the college in order to help keep the project on schedule. The project will offer a big boost for all the engineering students to explore new ideas while sharpening their engineering and technical skills.
