Four school students win NASA contest

The students are Siddharth Tripathy, Akshat Dutt and Nisarg Behera of XII standard and Mrinal Choudhury of VIII standard, all of them from Delhi Public School. The team comprising Siddharth, Akshat and Nisarg, who won the first prize in XI-XII grade, presented their project titled 'Sangri-la', a design of a space settlement colony to provide good living amenities for 20,000 permanent space residents, according to sources from the school.

The design envisages a heavenly abode for settlers who can revel in extraordinary luxury away from Earth, they said. The team proposed a scientific research laboratory as well as a business hub in space, bio-regenerative life systems incorporating all biological components, state of the art meditation halls, an efficiently functioning government machinery to take care of the law and order, a currency named 'Hawking' besides a stock exchange.

Mrinal won the speciality first prize for artistic merit in the paper presentation titled 'Sukhavati'. In her report, Mrinal presented several paintings and diagrams of a space colony depicting the interior and the exteriors of living spaces, besides laboratories and recreation areas, the sources said.

The colony, as per her design, would have efficient waste management system, self regenerative process with regard to food, water, clothing and ecology to sustain livelihood.

The students, along with science head of the school and their mentor Bijay Bahadur Mathur, have been invited by NASA to the USA to attend the 2011 International Space Development Conference to be held at Alabama from May 18 to May 27, the school sources said.