ISRO’s Jan 12 launch to carry CubeSat payload built by Hyderabad students from Blue Blocks

Hyderabad: A group of school students from Hyderabad has designed and built a flight-ready CubeSat payload that will be launched aboard the Indian Space Research Organisation’s PSLV-C62 mission later this month, marking a rare instance of adolescents executing a full aerospace engineering cycle.

The launch is scheduled for January 12 at 10:17 am from Satish Dhawan Space Centre.

Student-driven Project SBB-1 to take off

Seventeen students, aged between 12 and 15, from Blue Blocks Montessori School, Hyderabad, engineered the payload – named Project SBB-1 (Satellite Blue Blocks-1) – which has been officially manifested for launch by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

On Tuesday, Blue Blocks co-founders Pavan Goyal and Munira Hussain travelled to Ahmedabad to complete the final administrative formalities, clearing the student-built payload for integration with the launch vehicle.

How was the project designed and executed?

Unlike most school-level STEM initiatives, the project did not involve pre-assembled kits or simulated exercises.

The students worked from first principles, designing and assembling the CubeSat payload hardware and writing the firmware required for real-time telemetry. Commercial off-the-shelf sensors were integrated and soldered by the students themselves to study thermal behaviour in the vacuum of space.

Technical guidance was provided by scientists from Take Me 2 Space, while execution was left entirely to the student team.

According to the organisers, adult intervention during engineering tasks was deliberately avoided.

“We didn’t want to just watch a launch; we wanted to be on the rocket,” one student said. “Debugging the code when the sensors failed to communicate was the toughest part.”

The educational framework underpinning the initiative was developed by the Blue Blocks Micro Research Institute, which describes its approach as ‘Structural Autonomy’ – a model that removes constant adult supervision to build problem-solving resilience among adolescents.

Goyal said the project demonstrated that age was not a barrier to high-end engineering.

“They are not future engineers. They are flight-ready engineers today,” he said.

International recognition

The initiative has drawn international attention. The Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo has invited Goyal to present the project’s methodology, while the student team has also been selected to present a technical review of their CubeSat at the AMI Conference in Mexico.

A technical press briefing was held at the Media Plus Auditorium, Hyderabad, where, in a departure from convention, the students fielded the questions on orbit mechanics, firmware design and payload integration.

Blue Blocks is a Montessori-based institution in Hyderabad that integrates advanced laboratories in space, drone and blockchain technologies into its adolescent curriculum.