A bunch of teenagers from Patiala will rub shoulders with NASA engineers and take up the formidable task of designing a city to be built on the Moon when they travel to the Kennedy Space Center, Florida next month.
In the age group of 14-19, the 18 students of the Budha Dal Public School and Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology in Patiala, have earned the distinction of becoming the first Indian team ever to qualify for the Space Settlement Design Competition at NASA.
The team, which registered for the competition organised by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics under the name 'Team Force', is also the only foreign squad this year to have qualified for the final round of the competition to be held in Kennedy Space Center from July 17 to July 19.
The team, which met US Ambassador David C Mulford in Delhi on Wednesday and presented him with a copy of the qualifying design, is gung-ho about its chances in the final round in which it will be led by a NASA engineer in designing a city to be built on the surface of the Moon.
Abhishek Agarwal, a first year engineering student at the Thapar Institute, whose brainchild the qualifying project was, told PTI: "We registered very late for the competition, hence did not get much time to work on the initial project. But we still got selected. It is like a dream come true to go
to NASA and work there on a project. We will make the most of it."
One of the youngest members of the team, 14-year-old Mandeep Singh said the team already has some ideas about the basic structure of their city on the Moon.
"We will be given 43 hours to prepare our design, but we are confident we will do it well ahead of the deadline," he said.
In the final round, the team would again act as a company, whose CEO would be a NASA engineer.
Mandeep informed that the team would be known as 'Dougeldyne Astrosystems' in its task of designing the Moon settlement.
For the qualifying round of the competition, the team was required to design a space settlement in the earth's orbit, which had to be provided with all basic life-supporting features like gravity, atmosphere, trees and farms.
Elaborating on the qualifying design, which was submitted in March this year, Abhishek, who in 2001 had made an unsuccessful attempt at getting selected in the competition, informed that the students acted as a Virtual Space Construction Company and formulated a project report based on the demands made by the 'space authorities'.
About the one aspect of the project that was most appreciated, Abhishek said the basic infrastuctural design of their settlement came in for a lot of praise.
Presenting a copy of the qualifying project to Mulford, the team from Patiala had a wide-ranging interaction with him, covering a host of global issues from Indo-Pak relations to the US-led war in Iraq to the situation in West Asia.
Commending the achievement of 'Team Force', the American envoy said the US viewed India as a 'huge resource base of people working in the field of science and technology'.
