The Unlikely Space Rangers

At just 21, Snehadeep Kumar and Mohit Kumar Nayak are building India's first student-led CubeSats to detect gamma rays from space

- By TANISHA SAXENA

While most 14-year-olds were navigating adolescence through video games and schoolwork, Snehadeep Kumar was already charting a course for the stars. Today, at just 21, he and his business partner Mohit Kumar Nayak are developing shoebox-sized CubeSats in their lab in Bhubaneswar—marking India's first student-led initiative to detect gamma rays from space.

"Our research shows we can reduce the cost of billion-dollar satellites by about 98 percent at an almost similar accuracy," says Snehadeep, who is also the youngest Indian in history to be elected a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. Their findings, presented at the prestigious International Astronautical Congress, have piqued the interest of ISRO.

Snehadeep's fascination with space began early—inspired by Discovery Channel documentaries and a science encyclopedia that was given to him as a gift. Yet, it wasn't a telescope or lab experiment that shifted his path but a humble school science project involving drumstick (moringa) seeds in Class 9. "I was working on a project involving the use of drumstick seeds for water purification," he recalls. "I showed it at an exhibition hosted by SRM University in Kolkata and then at another exhibition. One of the teachers there suggested that I publish such research works."