A College Students Space Dream

hey everyone i am awesome

co-founder and ceo at pixelspace

pixelspace is a space technology company

that is building a constellation of some

of the world’s most advanced earth

imaging satellites to solve some of

humanity’s most pressing issues and help

make life on earth sustainably better

i started pixel with my co-founder while

i was still pursuing undergraduate

studies at pitts

and through this talk i’ll take you

through the journey of what led to me

starting pixel

what the lessons i’ve learned in my vr

and why anyone could have done

what we have done with pixel the journey

starts

with when i was a kid i was always

fascinated with the universe the cosmos

the starry skies anything related to

space

so much so that i seriously pondered

becoming an astronaut when i grew up

i used to force my father to buy me

encyclopedias and books about space to

binary binoculars and telescopes to look

at the starry skies

and the passion for space has never died

fast forwarding the journey while i

joined

bits planning as a fresher there were a

couple of experiences

i had while in college that

led to where i am today the first

opportunity

that came along the way was being a part

of the student satellite team at bits

that was working along with

esteemed scientists at isro to build

actual satellites and go to space as

part of isro student satellite program

my studies took a back burner during the

stint

but i didn’t care i was learning more at

the team

than i would have in the lecture class

anyway

the second opportunity that came along

the way was being a part of the

hyperloop india

team i ended up being a founding team

member as well as the engineering lead

of the only indian team to be selected

for the spacex hyperloop port

competition

as well as being able to present the

sport to elon and the rest of the spacex

team

this is the steepest learning curve i’d

have had in my life till then

we had to build a hyperloop board

without

expertise mentorship because there was

no one who had done it before

and without access to any materials on

the internet because again no one had

done this before

the biggest lesson that getting these

two opportunities taught me was that if

you’re given a seat on the rocket ship

don’t ask what’s it just get on i didn’t

know what this would lead to

while i was still pursuing these

opportunities but i knew

that these are opportunities that i

would not dare miss

but while we were in la at the spacex

competition that was on a tour of the

spacex factory

and that’s when i had eureka moment

looking at the rocket engines being

built

looking at the falcon booster that

landed back from space

i decided at that point in time that

space was a space for me to be in

and that i’d rather not open anything

else

came back from the competition started

reading as much as i could about space

and happened to stumble upon an

opportunity that led to pixel

and while reading about space happened

to re-stumble upon this pick

this was a pic that was taken by the

voyager spacecraft as it was exiting the

solar system

take a look at it again that tiny speck

of dust suspended in light beam

that’s earth that’s you that’s me that’s

every one of us that’s ever lived some

total of humanity right there in one

picture

and humanity’s greatest selfie

looking at me we need to realize how

fragile we really are how fragile our

planet is and that you need to take care

of it

but when you look around you realize

that that’s not really happening with

mass deforestation hyperurbanization

dramatic climatic changes everywhere we

are not taking care of the one whom that

we know

and one thing that came to mind while

reading up about space and looking at

this picture was that space technology

could help

us see things happening anywhere in the

world that would enable us to take steps

to solve these issues the first step was

being able to see these changes

occurring and happening and changing at

daily scale

but that was not being made possible

because the satellites that have

traditionally been built

have been the size of a room they have

been really expensive

and they take years to build for example

this satellite that you see here fell

down when manufacturing

a 300 million dollar satellite

had repairs was 100 million dollars to

be able to send it up to space

and took years to get it up there what’s

actually needed is to be able to send a

flock of small tiny satellites

that can cover the globe provide us with

data at a daily cadence and being able

to see how things are really changing on

earth’s surface

what are the steps that we can take to

make life on earth sustainable to make

life

better to make life more efficient

and that’s when the idea of pixels

germinated we decided that we would

build and deploy a constellation

of ultra small inexpensive satellites

that enable us to look anywhere on the

planet

at day scales and we will track these

changes thereby any bringers

or organizations take better decisions

that

propel humanity forward make life better

the idea was fairly simple we built

satellites that have a powerful unique

camera in them

that provide powerful unique data set

which lead to powerful insights

that we can use to create changes on

earth

but how do we exactly do that we do that

by

building and deploying our own

satellites by moving that data down to a

network around stations around the world

and we’re building a platform that

enables anyone with bc computer

knowledge to be able to set up a

workflow that helps them extract

insights from this data that’s coming

down from the satellites

we started with obviously the designing

of the satellite we got people together

we started thinking from first

principles what needs to go into a

satellite there needs to be a radio that

needs to be a good computer there has to

be a camera there needs to be solar

panels

and we managed to come up with a few

options and designs for what the

satellite needs to look like

the next step was freezing these are

freezing this design and simulating the

different situations that the software

would go through in the harsh

environments of space

or on the computer that follows up with

building and launching an engineering

model of the satellite that would

undergo

actual hardware testing such as

vibration shock

thermal vacuum testing that enable it to

go through the

shocks and vibrations that the satellite

would go through while launching on the

rocket

that the temperature fluctuations it

needs to go through while it’s in space

and finally after all this is done we

get completely manufactured

tested flight a satellite that will go

up on

a rocket we have managed to get through

this process once our first satellite is

manufactured tested and almost ready for

launch going up on february 28

2021 there is a second satellite that we

are currently in the process of

manufacturing that will go up in

december of 2021

and that’s another and that’s another

lesson that embarking on this journey

with pixel has taught me

is that we need to dare to dream big

it’s like that could you hear where if

you shoot to the moon

and even if you miss you’ll land among

the stars

a lot of people on this journey told us

that what we were doing was not possible

that would be just a bunch of college

students that was

doing it as a side project they would

not last that we would not be able to

raise money they would not be able to

build a satellite

but we didn’t pick into any of that and

that’s because there was this one quote

from president theodore roosevelt

that has kept us going it’s

the court that’s called the man in the

arena it is not

the critic who counts not the one who

points out

the strong man who stumbles not the doer

of deeds who might have done better

the credit belongs to one man and one

man alone the man in the arena

so it doesn’t matter what others say

doesn’t matter what others think

find what you love go do it what matters

is what you do

in the arena find what you love drown

out the noise

and do what you love thank you and hope

you had fun listening