It was all celebrations at DPS RK Puram when the team of 12 students along with advisor, Ms Rupa Das, arrived at the school after winning the prestigious International Space Design Competition in NASA as part of the winning “Grumbo Aerospace” team.
This is for the first time the school has won this renowned competition where 30 reputed schools with brilliant students from around the world participated. After winning the Asian Regional Space Settlement Design Competition in January 2018, DPS RK Puram students were invited by Anita Gale, co-founder, Space Settlement Design Competition, to represent Asia at the International Space Settlement Design Competition at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre, Florida, USA.
The team comprised Ananya Ashta, Bhavya Khandelwal, Kushagra Gupta, Mehek Manish Shah, Natasha Arya, Shiv Sethi, Shrijita Anand, Udit Malik, Vinamr Loomba Sachdeva, Gunjan Anand, Aditya Vikram Singh and Tarun Patra, from classes X, XI and XII.
The students were given 43 hours to prepare a presentation on the theme, Settlement on Moon in the year 2043 which involved various aspects of planning a settlement on the lunar surface, from developing structures to requirements like power and water, cost of development etc. A comprehensive corporate proposal had to be submitted.
The team was paired up with high school students from the US, the UK, Australia, Argentina and Uruguay to constituting to the company “Grumbo Aerospace”, with NASA engineers acting as the CEOs and advisors. After a gruelling 43-hour final, working on a moon surface city meant for research into terraforming, the company emerged as international winners.
During the competition, the students also got a chance to attend technical sessions organised by NASA & Boeing engineers involved in known space missions — the Space Shuttle and Apollo programmes — such as Norman Chaffee and Anita Gale.