Megha Wijewardane
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Charith Wijewardane (father)
- Doshanthri Ranatunge (mother)
Megha Wijewardane | |
|---|---|
 Megha in early 2025 prior to a speech at Debarawewa Presiential College, Sri Lanka | |
| Born | 29 March 2010 |
| Education | Woodcroft College, Adelaide Flinders University |
| Known for | The youngest ambassador for NASA |
| Parents |
|
Megha Mahima Wijewardane is a Sri Lankan-Australian scientific communicator, child prodigy, and the youngest ambassador for NASA's OSIRIS-Rex mission, representing Australia since 2019.
Megha Wijewardane was born on 29 March 2010 in Adelaide, Australia to two Sri Lankan immigrant parents. He is the son of artist Charith Wijewardane, and former newspaper editor Doshanthri Ranatunge.[1]
Megha excelled at physics and mathematics since a remarkably young age.
In 2017, when he was 7 years old, he won the 2017 NASA Space Apps challenge and did a lecture on the atmosphere of Earth. There, he won the Northrop Grumman Prize while competing with university students and aerospace engineers.[2] In 2018, Megha again was a significant part of NASA's Space Apps challenge. He worked on a solution regarding asteroid Bennu which is at risk of colliding with Earth in the future.[2][3][4][5]
Later in 2018, he participated in the ActInSpace challenge. In that challenge, he became the youngest team leader and youngest entrepreneur in Australia to start a business plan solution for the category science and technology. With Airbus, he took part in a project to find a solution for the identification of ships being used for illegal activities - primarily fishing vessels - that have turned off transponders.[6]
Due to his prior work on Bennu and work with transponders, he was offered NASA ambassadorship for the mission OSIRIS-REx which successfully retrieved a sample from the asteroid in October of 2020.
As an ambassador, the University of Arizona – LPL (Luna and Planetary Laboratory) offered him training in a variety of disciplines and reportedly scored very high on several examinations. In 2019, aged 9, he, in collaboration with several other contestants in NASA's space apps challenge, built a platform to recover people who are highly exposed to natural disasters using NASA live satellite data. There they introduced an app called "Megha Naada" which can warn people before floods occur.[2]
Megha studied at both Woodcroft College and Westminster School before attending Dara School in 2021, a specialized school for highly gifted students before finally moving to Hamilton Secondary College in 2022.[7][8]
He was later selected to study part time for a physics major at the University of Flinders, at age 12.[9]
Working as an ambassador
.png){kind=logo}
He is Australia's only junior NASA ambassador for NASA's mission OSIRIS-REx. The aim of Mission OSIRIS-REx is gather data from the potentially hazardous asteroid, Bennu, which is at risk of colliding with Earth in the future.
.png){kind=tracking}
As the ambassador of the mission for Australia, he is involved in communications for Australia with the mission OSIRIS-REx. He has the opportunity to access any news about the mission first-hand before it goes public and he shares the updated information with the public. Therefore, he participates in space summits, and visits schools, universities, astronomical clubs and events to share information about the mission OSIRIS-REx.[10]
In 2025 he visited Sri Lanka and did a series of lectures on the systems engineering of the NASA space shuttle at various aviation training centers.[11]