Bangladesh wins NASA Space Apps Challenge

For the second time, Bangladesh has become the world champion at NASA Space Apps Challenge.

In Best Mission Concept Category, ‘Team Mohakash’ from Khulna secured the top place by beating 4,534 teams from 162 countries, said a press release.

The team became champion from Khulna Division in 2021’s NASA Space Apps Challenge-National Hack-a-Thon.

The ‘ARSS-Advanced Regolith Sampler System’, a tool invented by ‘Team Mohakash’, enables astronauts to control the dust that flies freely during the mission to the surface of the aliens.

In past human missions to the moon, astronauts had been facing troubles working amid surface dust.

At low gravity, dust particles get easily raised and floated, making it difficult for astronauts to collect samples, as well as ionizing due to cosmic radiation, which could have a high possibility of damaging the spacesuit.

Bangladesh’s team invented an effective solution to this problem, inventing a toolset that traps these dust particles in a closed chamber and prevents the dust from floating.

The Information and Communication Technology State Minister, Zunaid Ahmed Palak, has expressed his excitement over the unprecedented success of Bangladesh in NASA Space Apps Challenge 2021.

He said, “Digital Bangladesh is being built by the hands of our youth. Khulna University of Science and Technology (KUET) and Bangladesh Army University of Engineering and Technology (BAUET) have won the title of Space Apps World Champions.”

“BASIS has been organizing this in Bangladesh with the proactive engagement of BASIS Students Forum. Following this, Bangladesh team has become the world champion for the second time. I congratulate “Team Mohakash” and BASIS. This achievement is another unique example of the progress of Digital Bangladesh,” he added

Regarding this achievement, BASIS President, Syed Almas Kabir said, “Our goal of this year was to do better than the previous events. We became world champions in 2018, but winning the NASA Space Apps Challenge World Champion for the second time is undoubtedly a great achievement. This is another major milestone in our endeavours as BASIS continues the journey of building a Digital Bangladesh.”

BASIS Senior Vice President, Farhana A. Rahman said, “We have become the world champion again. This achievement represents ICT strength of Bangladesh to the whole world in the month of victory.”

“Team Mohakash” team leader Sumit Chanda said, “It is always a matter of pride to be able to represent our country to the world. We have worked on a solution that the world’s largest space research organizations including NASA are still researching.

“We have been working on this project since last year, with BASIS as the biggest contributor. They have always helped us to achieve our goals through direct mentorship. We are grateful to our university teachers and seniors, for teaching us how to deal with problems and how to use them efficiently,” he added.

More than eight hundred projects were submitted from Bangladesh in this year’s edition of the international competition of NASA Space Apps Challenge, organized in collaboration with BASIS and BASIS Students Forum.

After scrapping the incomplete projects, representatives from 125 projects participated in the 48-hour hackathon, and the best 27 projects were nominated by NASA from Bangladesh.

It was organized in 9 cities of Bangladesh (Dhaka, Chattogram, Sylhet, Rajshahi, Khulna, Barisal, Rangpur, Mymensingh and Cumilla).