Cuttack: A team of 10 members from Odisha has been selected to participate in the NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge to be held in America. The Challenge is scheduled for April 15 this year.
A total of 87 teams will participate in the Challenge, which will be held virtually this year. The team from India is composed of students under the age of 19 and all are from Odisha.
The team is led by Rishikesh Amit Nayak of Jagatsinghpur and one Vaishali Sharma is the mission director of the team.
The selection of the Odisha team to take part in the Human Exploration Rover Challenge became possible due to the efforts of Anil Pradhan of Cuttack.
Similarly, Kailash Chandra Barik from Mayurbhanj, who once worked at the cycle shop of his father, is heading the team selected for Rover Manufacture.
Meanwhile, Rina Bagh from Boudh district who worked at a welding shop in Bhubaneswar is now heading the welding works in the team.
The team is now giving the final touch to a human rover that has been designed and built by them under the guidance of its mentors.
It is for the first time that a team from Odisha has been selected for the NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge.
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The budding scientists are working on a human rover which can easily accommodate and handle the weight of two people and move on the terrains of Mars and Moon.
As it is being claimed, they have gone the Swadeshi-way to develop the Rover as only the parts of a bicycle, bike, auto-rickshaw and car have been used.
The team will be making a human-powered rover for Mars and the moon. The team hopes to bring laurels for Odisha and make the State proud.
NASA’s (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) Human Exploration Rover Challenge is an annual event for high school and college students to design, build, and race human-powered, collapsible vehicles over simulated lunar/Martian terrain.
The team from Odisha was supposed to go to Alabama in April 2021 to represent the country in the competition, but this year’s HERC has replaced the in-person year-end events with a virtual event, NASA said, citing that health and safety of all teams remain the first priority of the space agency, reports said.
(With inputs from IANS)
