Chennai students win NASA award for affordable, homegrown satellite internet

Chennai: A team of Chennai-based engineering students has beaten over 18,000 projects worldwide to win the "Most Inspirational" award at the NASA International Space Apps Challenge 2025.

Their project, "Photonics Odyssey" or AakashNet, aims to bridge the digital divide in India by delivering high-speed, low-cost internet to the country’s most remote villages.

"AakashNet conceptually adopts the working philosophy long demonstrated by ISRO,” Prasanth Gopalakrishnan, a second year electronics and communication engineering student of SRM Easwari Engineering College, told PTI.

At the NASA International Space Apps Challenge, one of the world’s largest annual global hackathons, the team’s submission made it to the top 10 projects, winning the ‘Most Inspirational’ award.

Launched in 2012, the challenge hopes to foster innovation using NASA’s free and open data from satellites, telescopes and missions and create solutions for Earth and space.

Now that the team’s proposal has the “NASA stamp”, Gopalakrishnan is confident of “institutional support” to develop this as a public digital utility.

“Most global satellite internet systems follow a strongly commercial model. Their hardware is manufactured abroad using imported materials and technologies, and when these systems are brought into India, the final cost often becomes too high for large sections of the population,” said Gopalakrishnan.

Gopalakrishnan said this is where ISRO’s working philosophy -- which has consistently delivered highly reliable space technology at globally unmatched cost efficiency without compromising performance or safety -- served as an inspiration to the team.

“Using publicly available information and real-world system constraints, our project explores how a similar India-first, efficiency-driven approach could be applied to satellite broadband infrastructure,” he said.

His winning team comprised Rajalingam N, Rashi Menon and Sakthi Sanjeev Kumar from electronics and communication engineering department as well as Deeraj Kumar and Manish Varma D from computer science engineering department, specialising in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

Gopalakrishnan said they learned about the NASA Space Apps Challenge in June through their college Space Club, Odssdey Space Club.

The team of six was selected based on individual strengths. While electronics engineering students focused on the hardware and communication-design system, computer science engineering students handled software and simulation aspects, he added.

“Over a period of two to three months, we worked continuously on refining the concept. We explored different problem statements from NASA and zeroed in on ‘commercialising LEO’. We realised that this directly matched both our technical direction and social-impact goals,” said Gopalakrishnan.

AakashNet differentiates itself from foreign satellite internet providers by prioritising public impact over profit, using indigenous manufacturing and public-sector support to slash costs for underserved communities, he added.

“As providing internet access to rural and remote communities is our primary goal, affordability is equally critical.” Gopalakrishnan also pointed out how his college -- SRM Easwari Engineering College in Ramapuram -- provided mentors, scholars, labs, and innovation clubs, fostering interdisciplinary work.

"AakashNet is not just a student idea -- it is a reflection of the academic ecosystem that nurtured it," he said.

At the conceptual stage, the team plans to send technical documentation, patents, and proposals to ISRO for review and collaboration.

"The next phase involves submitting these proposals to ISRO and other relevant Indian public sector... for technical review," he outlined.

Long-term, the team eyes methodical development under national leadership for sovereignty and public good, avoiding hasty commercialisation.

"The long-term objective is not rapid commercialisation, but methodical development," he emphasised.