Indian students stun the world in the NASA Space Challenge, they Build Space Simulator

5 Indian students became the first ever bunch from the beautiful land to go and finish second in the NASA Space challenge. This is a challenge where coders, scientists, designers, storytellers, makers, builders, technologists, and everyone enthusiastic to address challenges regarding scientific matters are roped in under one roof.

Picture Source: India Times

The “Hackathon” challenge as it was named, lasted almost 49 hours and over 25,000 participants from over 69 countries took part. These five Indian students from the Vellore Institute of Technology, Tamil Nadu, grabbed the second position in the people’s choice award for the NASA space apps challenge award.

Mantej Singh Gill, Ankit Garg, Anupam Rana, Divyansh Rajput and Rajat Bhati, who entered together in the tournament with the name “Team Kepler”, bamboozled every technician and science lover with their brilliance.

Their team developed a space simulator using virtual reality and embedded systems, where an individual could experience a space shuttle launch. The virtual reality system was an integration of a dynamic chair with directional vibration feedback, a glove which allowed the user to interact with the virtual reality and an AI bot which acted as an astronaut’s assistant.

This entire project took around one time apparently for their team and this indeed is jaw dropping. To deliver something so brilliant at such a young age in such a short span of time is jaw dropping and all inspiring. They are currently developing a fully-fledged system where they can undertake NASA’s missions in the times to come.

The simulator apparently costed around 2-3k, which indeed is quite brilliant. The team is also planning to propose this project to ISRO and if they like it, who knows if Indians will begin to explore space with their feets touching the ground.

Indians over the last few years have been at the helm of many multinational companies like Google, Microsoft etc., and its really heart warming to see a pack of youngsters making the entire country proud with their achievement.

A philanthropic, self-obsessed individual, sometimes tedious, sometimes edgy, yet the positive vibes keep me alive. Stay calm, be yourself, its your life, do it your own way., my way is expressing via writing (typing rather).