New Delhi: Indian students showed their hidden talents in the YouTube Space Lab competition by being named the second largest group of finalists, next only to those from the US.It is being said that it was a platform for the future scientists to prove themselves.
India was ranked second last at the Global Test PISA a few weeks ago, but Indians proved themselves as budding scientists in the YouTube Space Lab competition.
The competition that was conducted by YouTube, Lenovo and Space Adventures, in association with The National Aeronautics and Space Administration ( NASA), the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), gave budding scientists a platform to showcase their talent.
As per the report’s findings, there were two categories of participants: one of students aged 14-16 years and the other category was for students aged 14-16 years.
All the participants had to submit a video that described their science experiment to be performed in space. The participants were thousands in number, and had come from more than 80 nations to participate in the competition.
While US led with 10 finalists, India followed with nine. The Indian finalists come from cities like Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and New Delhi.
The winners will be decided on the basis of the judgement of the YouTube community alongside a prestigious panel of judges, including renowned scientist, Professor Stephen Hawking, NASAs Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations William Gerstenmaier, NASAs Associate Administrator of Education and former Astronaut Leland Melvin, ESA Astronaut Frank De Winne, JAXA Astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and Cirque du Soleils founder Guy Lalibert.
Six regional winners (two teams from each of the three regions- The Americas, Europe, Middle-East and Africa and Asia-Pacific) will be announced in February and will gather in Washington, DC, in March to experience a ZERO-G flight and receive a Lenovo IdeaPad laptop.
From them, two global winners, one from each age group, will be announced. The global winners will get to choose a unique space experience as a prize: a trip to Japan to watch their experiment blast off in a rocket bound for the ISS, or once they are 18 years old, a one-of-a-kind astronaut training experience in Star City, Russia, the training centre for Russian cosmonauts.
It has been revealed that the final winners would be declared in the month of February by the YouTube community.
