LPU students bag award at NASA event

editorial@tribune.com

Our Correspondent

Phagwara,July 16

A team of seven students, ‘Visionauts’, of Lovely Professional University (LPU) have won the ‘STEM Engagement Award’ in the 2019 NASA’s Human Exploration Rover Challenge held at the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

The team also got an opportunity to interact with Sunita Williams, NASA astronaut and two-time spaceflight veteran, who attended the second day of the event.

The team comprised of students from BTech (Mechanical Engineering), namely Karan Singh, Hemant Sharma, Rohit Manik Patil, Harsimran Kaur, Tejinder Kaur, Ekampreet Singh and Gursewak Singh.

Karan Singh shared: “We are thrilled to win the award. The competition is challenging and offered us a chance to test ourselves against the best in the world. We are thankful for the support offered to us by our faculty and the university, who stood by us throughout the competition.”

LPU Chancellor Ashok Mittal said: “It is great to see our students placing a firm faith in their capabilities to be world beaters and demonstrating it on a global stage. This will inspire other students at LPU to think global and win more such laurels.”

The 25th NASA Rover Challenge saw participation from over 100 teams from across the globe, including the US, Germany, India, Mexico, Morocco and Peru. The competition challenges high school and college teams to design, build and test human-powered roving vehicles inspired by the Apollo lunar missions and future exploration missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond.

It continues the agency’s effort to use the appeal and intrigue of its space missions and programmes as catalysts for engaging students in STEM—science, technology, engineering and mathematics.