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