By IANS,
New Delhi: Twenty-year-old Gurpreet Singh, a Delhi student, still can’t get over his NASA experience that won him two awards for designing a vehicle which can run unmanned on the surface of the moon.
Excited about the achievement, Singh Thursday said educational institutes in India need to be better informed of such global events for students of the country to showcase their talent.
He said the Indian government and schools in the country take less interest in sending their students for such international events.
“India should send students for such programmes often and acknowledge the talent they have,” Singh told reporters.
Singh and his teammates, all in the first or second year of graduation, designed the vehicle, which he named Moon Hummer after a famous vehicle brand of General Motors, at the US space agency during the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Annual Great Moon Buggy Race in April.
Singh, a student of the Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha university (GGSIPU), along with four others from the Kirori Mal College of Delhi University participated in the event.
Moon Hummer went on to win them two awards – the Best Initial Design and the Safety System award in the competition.
An exhilarated Singh shared his NASA experience at the Indraprastha university.
“We made a 70 kg moon buggy from mild steel which could run on the surface of the moon, unmanned. We called it the Moon Hummer,” Singh told reporters.”
“We were the smallest and the the youngest team there because all the students in our team were either from first year or second year graduation. Call it destiny, but this achievement means a lot to us,” he said.
A total of 33 teams took part in the competition from across the world. Of them, five were from Delhi.