Satya Nayagam is not your typical rocket scientist.
At just 19, Nayagam is part of a team of college students from around the nation that is trying to launch a rocket into space. In recent weeks, Operation Space managed to build and launch a rocket of their design into the sky.
“The whole goal is to show that kids can raise money, work together on the internet, and put something together that can go into space,” Nayagam told Patch. “If we can do that, than anyone can do anything they want to do.”
A Born Stargazer
Nayagam’s father is a contractor for NASA in Ohio. His dad’s career imbued Nayagam with an early sense of adoration for the night sky and a fascination for the space beyond Earth’s atmosphere.
Through middle and high school in Strongsville, Nayagam took part in STEM clubs and launched rockets into the air. Looking back on his exploits, the now-Princeton student called the launches “kiddy stuff” but credited the work with keeping his love of space burning.
With the help of his friends and family, Nayagam also made rocket fuel at his home. When recalling that creation, the 19-year-old seemed nonchalant about young teens handling dangerous chemicals.
“It’s not much different than fire crackers,” he told Patch.
During his stint at Strongsville High, Nayagam completed an internship with NASA. He conducted an experiment in the combustion group, but was exposed to all of the agency’s departments, including propulsion and aircraft design. He said his time at NASA reinvigorated his desire to explore aeronautics.
Last year, Nayagam graduated from Strongsville High and matriculated to Princeton. He is majoring in chemical engineering but also immediately began perusing the university’s rocketry and space offerings, particularly its extracurriculars.
There were a number of clubs that wanted to launch rockets, but one group caught his eye: Space Shot.
“They wanted to send a rocket to space. Go big or go home. I thought to myself, ‘I’ll be certified to do rocket science soon anyways, so I might as well start now,'” he said.
Space Operations
While taking part in Space Shot, Joshua Farahzad, the founder of a national group called Operation Space reached out to aeronautics clubs around the U.S. He wanted to know if anyone wanted to help him send a rocket into space.
The leader of Princeton’s Space Shot quickly replied to Farahzad, telling him his club would be interested in the effort. Nayagam and a few others were asked to take part and also said yes.
Nayagam’s experience made him an attractive candidate for the operation. After interning with NASA, he spent time with Blue Origin, a private aerospace manufacturer founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. Nayagam helped organize the movement of sub-orbital loads while with the company.
Joining Operation Space didn’t involve ID cards and access to highly guarded buildings. Nayagam and his peers were merely invited to a Slack channel, a private online messaging service, that allowed members of the team to communicate nationwide. Almost everyone working with Operation Space was doing so autonomously.
“The majority of the work was designing the rocket in CAD (computer-aided design). That’s how we were able to do so much of the work as a decentralized group,” Nayagam said. He noted that after the design phase ended…the hard work started.
Pieces of the rocket had to be assembled around the nation. Crews were working to build parts based on specifications, but they were working without oversight and without the benefit of seeing the other, connecting parts.
That meant assembling the rocket was always going to be an uphill battle.
Pretty High Up There
Operation Space met in-person for the first time two weeks before the scheduled launch of their rocket. The team came together in New Mexico and, after the pleasantries, frantically began assembling their rocket and troubleshooting the flaws.
“We discovered there were a lot of problems with parts that were assembled across the country,” Nayagam said.
Teams were sent scrambling across New Mexico, bursting into machine shops and hardware stores, urgently trying to fit pieces together. Operation Space had a three-day window in which to launch their rocket (the first weekend of June), and that meant time was a more precious resource than usual.
The team missed a first day launch, but were able to make use of the second day. “The launch procedures went flawlessly,” Nayagam said.
Operation Space’s first rocket traveled furthest, going about 100,000 feet into the air.
While 100,000 feet is impressive, the team wanted to cross the Karman line, the unofficial boundary into space. The Karman Line is about 62 miles up (or more than 327,000 feet).
Operation Space is still doing post-flight analysis to determine what went wrong. Nayagam said the team has a few theories, but is reviewing the data. The goal will be to relaunch a rocket within a year, Nayagam told Patch.
The Future
Besides launching more rockets higher into the sky (and hopefully past the Karman line), Nayagam, will soon start his second year at Princeton.
The 19-year-old wants to work in the aerospace field, that much has not changed. He said he’d be comfortable working either for the government, possibly for NASA, or with a private company like Blue Origin.
“I just want to further space exploration,” he said. Space is a book still waiting to be read and understood and Nayagam feels we’ve only made it to the prologue. Perhaps he’ll be part of a generation that leads us to the first chapter.
“There’s so much that can be learned from doing science in space. It’s not solely for exploration,” Nayagam said.
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