April 7 was a grand day for India. A team led by Guwahati lad Manas Pratim Borah and lead designers Deepika Ram Davuluri and Shekhar D. Pathak made the country proud as they shouldered the immense responsibility of representing Team India International in collaboration with the International Space Education Institute, Leipzig, Germany.
Manas and his team, ‘Team India International’ had the responsibility of making a Human Exploration Rover that could be manpowered and could be run on the surface of the Moon or Mars. In the words of Manas himself, ‘The competition was tough and all the hard work we put in over the past 9 months would be put to test now.’
The team along with their international peers had 4 rovers for the competition. Each rover was allowed to make 2 runs on the course. Having responsibility of wheel design, rover design and also managing the pit crew, the team had to optimally utilize all their resources. ‘The biggest challenge for us was the inclusion of the Non-Pneumatic Wheel Design which is a wheel without normal rubber tyre or air filled tyres. We brainstormed and made the spokes of glass fibre’, said Manas. “We had the most unconventional design, but it worked very well. Our Rovers had the state of the art gear systems that could propel the rover through any obstacle with the least of human power applied on it”, said Manas as he described this remarkable design.
Sponsored by Tec Mantra Labs, Delhi under the Chairmanship of Navdeep Singh, the team said that this was ‘a very fruitful experience’ who also donated 3000 Euros. The team worked with the likes of Mr. Ralf Heckle, Director of the NASA Outreach Program, Europe and Manas, Deepika and Shekhar had the opportunity of working with students of different nationalities of Germany, Russia, Italy, Bolivia, America and Japan, reported G Plus News.
The 2 day race was filled with suspense and was an exhilarating experience. In the final awards ceremony, Team India International clinched the “BEST INTERNATIONAL TEAM AWARD – JESCO VON PUTTKAMER“.
The students will be given the opportunity to work with NASA for the MARS 2030 Mission which is a mission to send man to MARS for the purpose of exploration of the planet. This will require a human powered rover and the team is now working on this rover. The team will travel to Germany in the summer of 2016 for 3 months to develop this next generation rover.