Dr Bidushi Bhattacharya, CEO of Bhattacharya Space Enterprises, remembers being in awe when she watched NASA launch the Marine 9 spacecraft on television in the 1970s. The spacecraft was the first to orbit another planet and its cameras snapped close-up views of Mars’ major features, including its polar caps, the vast Valles Marineris canyon and the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos. It also spotted evidence of flowing water sometime in the ancient past.

Bhattacharya, an American. recounts: “The launch was broadcast on television and back then you couldn’t record it and everyone would wait eagerly for the evening news. My family would gather around the television to watch the launch while having dinner.” The fascination she felt watching the news telecast inspired her to pursue a career in space science.

She spent 25 years at NASA, working on spacecraft development, mission operations, scientific research, technical writing and academic administration. Her NASA projects have included the Hubble Space Telescope, the Mars Rover Program, the Galileo Mission to Jupiter and the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory.

Now, she wants to make it possible for Singaporeans to pursue a career in space science. To this end, she launched Bhattacharya Space Enterprises last year to provide students here with access to space technology and Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) career paths.

Support for entrepreneurs
“Whenever I talk to people about what I do, both kids and adults will say that’s really fun and they would tell me how they would have done something in space tech but there are no job opportunities locally. So, we’re trying to shift things here so that a career path becomes viable,” she says.

The way she sees it, Singapore is conducive for innovation because the government supports entrepreneurship. She observes: “There’s a huge amount of social support for entrepreneurs here and, even if they fail, nobody is going to be impoverished and living on the streets… So, if you want to take the chance and go try something new, I think this is one of the best environments to be able to do that.”

She shares her experience of being able to take risks early in her career because there was the option of moving back with her parents if things did not work out. Bhattacharya landed the role of calibration engineer at the NASA Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute in the 1980s, following the recommendation of a professor. At the time, NASA was still reeling from the Challenger disaster, which saw the space shuttle orbiter break apart 73 seconds into its flight. The Hubble, which was supposed to launch in the 1986 and 1987 time frame, was delayed so that NASA could try and figure out what happened exactly with the Challenger.

“The Hubble Space Telescope project was delayed for a bunch of years because space shuttles were thought to be quite risky after the Challenger exploded and nobody knew whether the Hubble was going to work. So, I was taking on a project where there was the possibility that it would explode on the launch pad or you couldn’t get the telescope to turn on and other concerns like that. There were so many firsts in that project,” she says.

One of the projects Bhattacharya has launched to help aspiring space entrepreneurs is SG+CubeSat, a programme that focuses on space entrepreneurship for social good. The programme was developed with Professor Neo Kok Beng, an associate professor (adjunct) at the National University of Singapore. The idea of SG+CubeSat is to get tertiary students in the citystate to design, build, launch and use a cube satellite. A CubeSat is a type of miniaturised satellite for space research that measures 10cm each side. It uses commercial off-the-shelf components for electronics and structure and is most commonly put in orbit by deployers on the International Space Station or launched as secondary payloads on a launch vehicle.

According to Bhattacharya, the availability of the CubeSat has made space entrepreneurship accessible to students and start-ups. “These satellites are self-contained, off-the-shelf technology. So, you could buy it in the form of a kit,” she says.

Social good
Bhattacharya does not want participants of SG + CubeSat to just build a satellite by following the instructions manual.

Instead, she wants them to think about what the satellite can be used for. “You need to identify a way to get the data you want and what to use it for. So, if you want to explore ways to study the haze, you need to tell us what kind of cameras would be good, what kind of wavelengths of light you need to be able to look at to study the haze,” she adds.

The programme places importance on social good, as she believes that satellite and space technology enable the collection of useful data that can address environmental and social issues. For instance, if someone wants to explore ways to help Syrian refugees, he could obtain high-resolution data about migration patterns from a satellite. This would help greatly in the deployment of food and aid for refugees.

Bhattacharya does not plan to hand a CubeSat to just anyone who comes up with an idea. Instead, she is using StarHub i3’s crowdsourcing platform, Crowdtivate, to source for the best ideas. These suggestions will then be opened up for voting and the winning ideas will see their plan come to fruition. She emphasises: “Having ideas is really the most important thing because I want these students to feel that their ideas are being validated.”

There is also good reason for her decision to use a crowdsourcing platform to gather ideas. She points out that such platforms are becoming an amazing source of support for projects. For example, a few of her friends were working on a project called LightSail, where they sent a small spacecraft into Earth orbit carrying large, reflective solar sails as a method of propulsion for their CubeSat. They launched the project on Kickstarter to raise US$300,000 ($430,000) but received more than US$1.2 million.

“There’s a lot of support out there for space tech on crowdfunding sites... There are also no regulations when it comes to launching CubeSats yet, so it is a good time for this,” says Bhattacharya. She anticipates launching the first CubeSat in 2017. According to her, the first launch will take more time but, subsequently, it will take a shorter amount of time. The way she sees it, as soon as the CubeSats start launching, people will have jobs, as it will not take long to develop a space tech ecosystem.

Another project she is working on is getting university students in Singapore to put experiments on the International Space Station. “There are a series of racks at the International Space Station where people can do things like mixing fluids in space in zero gravity. This will help students develop their experiments and the findings will be brought back to Earth the next time a rocket goes up to do a re-supply,” she says.

Meanwhile, Bhattacharya is also involved in advising businesses on innovation. At Innovation DeepDive, a future leaders programme organised by NTUC, she shared that her biggest takeaway from NASA is that innovation is people-driven. “If a person has innovative ideas, they should be heard. Innovative ideas don’t always have to work. If you’re a manager, every idea from your staff has to be seriously considered so the ideas keep coming and your staff keep thinking,” she says.

This article appeared in the Enterprise of Issue 713 (Feb 1) of The Edge Singapore.