Indian Students Compete to Design Space Colony Fit for 10,000 People

Twelve young enthusiasts from a Delhi school have been selected for the finals of the prestigious International Space Settlement Design Competition in the US.

The contest, held in Florida at NASA, puts high school students in the shoes of aerospace industry engineers designing a city in space that will be home for over 10,000 people. Creating a space settlement, or a space colony, student engineers have to demonstrate creativity, technical competence, management skills, space environment knowledge, teamwork, and presentation techniques to conquer the possible problems.

The planetary colonies, situated on Mars, Mercury, Venus, the Moon or in the Asteroid Belt, should be as "Earth-like as possible." The teams of students developed an infrastructure of the settlement, including sections for business or industry, colonists' education and jobs and medical systems. Meeting the needs of colony's citizens, the participants have to arrange transportation system, computer networks and different robots, designing even their appearance and functions.

The team of twelve Indian students selected from grades 10 to 12 of the Delhi Public School to compete, earlier won the first part of the contest, the Asian regional round against teams from China, Japan, Korea, and Pakistan.

The Minister of State for Atomic Energy and Space in the Prime Minister's Office, Jitendra Singh, invited the selected participants on June 30, on the eve of their departure for Florida. He congratulated the team of young scientists and praised them for their achievement, assuring them of all possible help from the government.

The winners of the competition will get an opportunity to compete with a new scenario in a live competition at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, with real engineers sharing their knowledge and experience in both engineering and management, an overview on the contest's official website states.