THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Six students from the state will get a chance to view a full-fledged space mission from the Sriharikota spaceport in November. All the expenses of the expedition will be borne by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The six students are winners of an all-Kerala quiz contest conducted by the ISRO units in Thiruvananthapuram as part of this year’s World Space Week (WSW-2016) celebrations. Their visit will be a first for ISRO, as this is the first time that the space agency is extending a formal invitation to school students to witness a launch, ISRO officials said.
The winners are: Deviprasad V R and Vismal S Kumar, Marygiri EMHSS, Kudappanakkunnu (South Zone); Arun T A and Sujith M S, PMGHSS, Palakkad (Central Zone); and Nandan B and Rohith N, St Michael’s AIHSS, Kannur (North Zone). “They will be taken to the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, to witness the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle-C 36 (PSLV-C 36) mission slated for November this year. This is the first time that the ISRO chairman, A S Kiran Kumar, is issuing an invitation to school students for a mission,” VSSC spokesperson S R Vijayamohana Kumar said. The PSLV C-36 mission will place the Resource-2A satellite in orbit in November. The satellite is a follow-on project to the Resource-2 satellite, and has the same configuration.
Organised jointly by VSSC, the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC) and the ISRO Inertial Systems Unit (IISU), the quiz competitions were conducted at Thiruvananthapuram, Thrissur and Kozhikode. The winners were presented with cash prizes and certificates at a function here. Around 500 students participated in the event.