ISSET and NASA host Mission Discovery programme in city school

In this five-day programme, students are divided in teams where each group has to present one unique idea that can be 'workable and useful to earth'.

Written by Neeti Nigam

Noida | Updated: October 11, 2016 12:31 PM IST

2 min read

They say the best out-of-box ideas come from young minds. All what is needed is the right kind of guidance. Therefore, to tap the enthusiasm and generate the interest of students in STEM courses, International Space School Educational Trust (ISSET) is hosting its Mission Discovery programme at Shiv Nadar School, Noida.

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In this five-day programme, students are divided in teams where each group has to present one unique idea that can be ‘workable and useful to earth’. The winner team’s ‘original experiment’ is sent to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) who will further develop it and would send it to the Space.

This is the first time that such a workshop is being conducted in Asia. Under the mentorship of ISSET team that includes retired NASA astronaut Steven Swanson, students took keen interest in understanding the functionality of a space station.

“This is my first visit to India and I am completely amazed with the enthusiasm shown by the students. Their knowledge is at par with their peers from other countries such as the United States, the UK or Australia,” said Swanson.

About 250 students from classes 8 to 12 were part of the programme that includes 17 schools of north India. One of the projects were on understanding how ferrofluid can help in determining the distance of asteroids from Earth.

Read: South Asia needs 15 million new teachers by 2030: UNESCO

Some of the past winning projects include determining the effectiveness of treatment of conjunctivitis in microgravity or carbon dioxide consumption by cacti in space.

The result will be out on October 9.

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Neeti Nigam

Neeti Nigam leads the education department at indianexpress.com. She joined the Indian Express in 2015 and has set up the education and job sections in the online department. She covers schools and higher education, entrance and board exams, study abroad, civil services and other career-related news. Prior to that, she worked as a lifestyle and entertainment journalist in The Pioneer newspaper's magazine division. Besides working in the in-flight Air India (Namaskaar) magazine, she was part of the launch team of Indian Railways on-board magazine Rail Bandhu. She has also worked as a city reporter covering north Delhi in Hindustan Times. In 2012, she covered the MCD elections. You can write to her at neeti.nigam@indianexpress.com ... Read More

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