Noida school shines at NASA competition

NEW DELHI: A 12-member team from Amity International School, Noida, won the 20th Annual International Space Settlement Design Competition, 2015, held from August 2 to 4, at NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA.

The students of classes IX and X participated in the finals and competed against 200 others from across the world. Amity was part of a team "Vulture Aviation".

Amity team designed two main and four outlying settlements to accommodate a population of 24,000 as well as a transient of 3,000 more on Mars using a transparent material "Aluminum Oxinitride". The team members worked on all the aspects including structuring engineering, automation engineering, operations engineering, human engineering, marketing and finance, schedule and cost for The team worked on the design for 48 hours.

Aabhaas Vaish, a team member said, "The Mars Space Settlement was named as Argonom Bult and proposed to be designed inside a crater. The selection of the location for settling of Mars colony depended on the quality of soil and low amount of dust storm in that particular area."

He explained how corpses will be decomposed on Mars and how inhabitants can be saved from the radiations from other planets.

The competition puts high school students in the shoes of aerospace industry engineers. Student engineers demonstrate creativity, technical competence, management skills, space environment knowledge, teamwork, and presentation techniques to conquer the problems inherent in designing a Space Settlement.