Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami on Wednesday presented a cash reward of Rs 10 lakh to Rifath Sharook and his team who had developed 'KalamSat,' a 64-gram micro satellite that was launched by NASA in the previous month. The team members, including Sharook, met the Chief Minister at the Secretariat in Chennai, a government release said. In the previous month, Palaniswami had announced in the State Assembly that Rs 10 lakh would be given to Sharook and his team by the government "to further encourage" them.

'KalamSat,' launched on June 22 by NASA, won the first prize from among 80,000 models in a competition held by the American space agency. It is a 3.8 cm cube Femto satellite (less than 0.1 kg mass) and its structure is fully 3D printed with reinforced carbon fiber polymer. Replete with a temperature and humidity sensor, a barometric pressure sensor, the tiny and 'world's lightest' satellite also has a Nano Geiger Muller counter to measure radiation in outer space.