Girl students of Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies (RGUKT) have outshone boys by bagging 12 of the 13 slots for making it to the NASA Space Settlement Contest. They will be leaving for the U.S. via Chennai on Monday. Girls performed better than boys in designing projects on space settlement for humans.
The selected students will present their projects at the 32 Annual International Space Development Conference (ISDC), to be held at San Diego, in the US, from May 23 to 27.
Of the 38 students selected for the NASA Ames Space Settlement Design Contest-2013, 29 were girls from International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Nuzvid, but only 12 of them will make it to the US. Students of Pre-University and first year Engineering of the budding university have designed 13 projects on the title ‘Creating alternative living for mankind on Space’, said IIIT Director Ibrahim Khan.
“We were inspired by Indian astronauts Kalpana Chawla and Sunitha Williams. Humans are creating miracles in the history of space, missile and robotics technologies. But, the number of women astronauts in India and other countries is very small. We want to become scientists in space and robotics technologies,” say the budding engineers preparing for their foreign trip.
Some of the missions selected for ISDC are Amaranthos, Garuda, Atman, Titan, Magma, Anthena, Divouces, and Sudarshan Chakra. The students in their projects focussed on how to provide luxurious life for man with food, housing, employment, solar energy, pollution-free environment and other facilities on moon with latest technologies, for the next two decades.
“Our project ‘Atman’ indicates the successful journey of man to the soul of new space era. We explained how to produce power by using solar wind through electrical sail technology, which was developed by the US in January 2013,” said V. Divya Sri, who is one of the three designers of the mission.
“The mission ‘Titan’ is aimed at designing plans on how to tap natural resources from moon and other planets and lead a comfortable life on space. In our project, robots will play a key role by utilising the latest technologies,” said M. Hemalatha, who prepared ‘Titan’, along with two other girls H. Divya and S. Padmasri.
