The 15th Annual Asian Regional Space Settlement Design Competition (ARSSDC) was held at Om Shanti Retreat Centre, Manesar from 10 to 14 February 2019. Two teams from DPS RK Puram comprising of 19 students and 02 teachers participated in this 05 days mega event.
One of the teams “Team Red Origin” emerged as the winners of the competition. The team comprised of Rudraneel Sinha(IX-J), Vir Malhotra(IX-K), Arnav Goel(X-H), Kshitiz(X-H), Saranyaa Kashyap(X-G), Aaditya Kashyap(XI-G), Ashay Srivastava(IX-K) and Arya Vikram Singh(VII-C). They were paired up with 5 other teams from all over India and China to form the company Rockdonnell.
Having been assigned the task to construct a settlement in Earth orbit to house 80,000 people, they went through 27 gruelling hours of work, preparing a proposal to be submitted at the end of work time. Later, these proposals had to be presented within 35 minutes in front of the judging panel and 4 other companies.
After long deliberation, their designs were adjudged the best by the judging panel, comprising of Aerospace industry experts like Anita Gale, Jack Gafford (worked for Boeing and proposed designs for NASA missions), G. Uma Devi (ISRO Deputy Director at the National Remote Sensing Centre, Hyderabad), Dr. Zafar Taqvi (Worked with NASA from Apollo 11 to the completion of the ISS) among others. Technical sessions were given by these judges before the start of the competition.
In addition to this, Rudraneel Sinha was awarded the Dick Edwards Award for Exceptional Leadership for the company Rockdonnell.
This is DPS RK Puram’s second consecutive year of winning ARSSDC. The members of the winning team have been invited to the International Finals to be held at Kennedy Space Centre Visitor’s Complex, Florida, USA, from 26 to 29 July, 2019.
The second team – Team Space Y, emerged as Runners Up. The team comprised of Ashvin Verma(IX-M), Adarsh Kumar(IX-K), Naman Dhingra(XI-E), Om Gupta(XI-H), Priyanshi Ahuja(X-H), Mihir Agarwal(X-G), Aryaman Chandra(IX-M), Aashman Rastogi(X-L), Siddhant Parekh(XI-D) and Ayushmaan Raj Anand(X-H). Like Team Red Origin, they were paired up with teams from India and China to form the company Vereinighten Flugfahrten.
02 Teachers- Dr. Anang Jai Saxena (DPS RK Puram) and Mrs. Mridushmita Sharma (DPS EOK) accompanied the teams for the competition.
