Thirty teenagers from Bangalore recently had a brush with space and the people who make the Indian space programme tick.
A recently concluded 10-day space camp gave these students (of classes 9 to 12) exclusive glimpses of the country’s activities related to space and their uses in everyday life. They learnt how communication and remote-sensing satellites are made, and how they are managed from the ground, thousands of kilometres away. The youngsters sat through lessons from space experts and visited a few Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) centres in Bangalore.
ISRO scientists helped design the camp.
The camp was aimed at creating interest in youngsters about space science and its relevance to society, said Basant Nair, coordinator, NurtureClub, in a release.
He further said that the exposure would help give them a firm footing for a future career in astronomy .
The teenagers also visited the satellite centre on the old HAL airport road where a few satellites are being assembled. A trip to Byalalu on the outskirts of Bangalore took them to the Indian Deep Space Network, where giant antennas keep track of Indian planetary spacecraft several million kilometres away. The Mars orbiter is more than half-way to the Red Planet and the Chandrayaan-1 lunar mission of 2008-09 was monitored from here.
The youngsters sat through classes held at the National College in Jayanagar.
Aday was spent at the Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium watching starry shows and hearing astronomers.
