A team of students, ‘Visionauts’, from Lovely Professional University have won the prestigious “STEM Engagement Award” in the 2019 NASA’s Human Exploration Rover Challenge held at the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. This marks the third consecutive occasion of a team from LPU getting selected to participate in the prestigious competition. Interestingly, 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 7 LPU 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 STEM Engagement Award from NASA. The competition is extremely challenging and offered us a chance to test ourselves against the best in the world. To have won an award in a competition of this stature is a moment of great pride for all of us. We are thankful for the exceptional support offered to us by our faculty and the university, who stood by us throughout the competition.”
LPU Chancellor Ashok Mittal holds: “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 many more 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 programs as catalysts for engaging students in STEM—science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
