Sri Lanka, April 19 -- Sri Lanka's first satellite Raavana 1 was launched successfully into space yesterday from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's East Shore.

The event which occurred at 2.16 am marked Sri Lanka's entry into the global space age. BIRDS-3 satellites from Japan, Nepal and Sri Lanka were taken to

International Space Station (ISS) as a cargo and had been boarded onto Antares rocket in this mission which is carrying the Cygnus cargo spacecraft.

Raavana 1 had been designed and built by Research Engineers Tharindu Dayaratne and Dulani Chamika from the Arthur C. Clarke Institute, Moratuwa, at the Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan. It is 1,000 cubic cm in size and weighs 1.1 kg. It is set to be launched into or...