Team from Bangladesh wins NASA Space Apps Challenge

NASA Space Apps Challenge is an annual global contest held by NASA that features ground-breaking concepts for space exploration created by aspiring space engineers.

This year, the contest had over 28,000 participants from 162 countries and included 28 challenges and over 2,800 projects. Among them, the team 'Mohakash' from Bangladesh won Global Finalists in the category 'Best Mission Concept'.

Team 'Mohakash' consisted of Barnita Basak Trisha and Md. Momenul Haque from BAUET (Bangladesh Army University of Engineering and Technology) and Sumit Chanda, Samir Imtiaz, Shishir Kairy and Alvi Rownok from KUET (Khulna University of Engineering & Technology).

Sumit Chanda, team leader of 'Mohakash', expressed delight at being able to represent Bangladesh on an international stage, "On the official NASA website they mentioned our team and country's name. That is a huge honour for us, and we hope this achievement will inspire the youth to explore aerospace engineering."

The theme for NASA Space Apps Challenge 2021 was 'Virtual Planetary Exploration V2.0', for which participants had to create interactive 3D models of geology tools that astronauts can use when exploring surfaces of celestial bodies or planets.

Team 'Mohakash' came up with the concept of 'Advanced Regolith Sampler System (ARSS)': a battery-powered motor tool consisting of bucket blades. These buckets are placed in a certain sequence to easily scoop materials known as regoliths, which are fragments found on planetary surfaces.

"We found that in almost every mission, astronauts complain about regolith. Because regolith fragments are ionized particles, they tend to stick to spacesuits and often cause damage. Also, because they float, collecting them takes a lot of time and resources. Thus, we came up with the ARSS, which astronauts can use to easily clean surfaces of planets and celestial bodies," stated Sumit.

Regarding the importance of regolith management, Sumit added, "Recent research has discovered that oxygen can be extracted from regolith fragments. Since mankind is planning for accommodation in outer planetary bodies, production of oxygen is crucial, which makes the proper collection of regolith an extremely important task."

According to Sumit, NASA has already expressed interest in working with team 'Mohakash'. The ARSS project is still in its electronic configuration phase, but the team hopes they will be able to produce a prototype within the next four months.