Bangladeshi team wins NASA Space Apps Challenge 2021 award
A Bangladeshi team has become the world champion at NASA Space Apps Challenge 2021 beating 4,534 teams from 162 countries.
"Team Mohakash" from Khulna, secured top place in the competition in Best Mission Concept category.
They proposed the Advanced Regolith Sampler System (ARSS) to help astronauts get rid of space dust in future missions.
According to their project summary, in the previous Apollo missions, astronauts reported difficulties while handling the regoliths, ionised particles due to the absorption of solar radiation.
ARSS will use the RASSOR bucket technology to scoop and trap the regoliths.
The winning teams were announced on a Twitter livestream by former NASA astronaut Cady Coleman on 10 December, according to Nasa Earth Data.
Dubbed the "largest annual global hackathon in the world," the goal of the Space Apps Challenge is for teams to create open-source solutions to address challenges on Earth and in space around a specific theme over a collaborative weekend.
More than eight hundred projects were submitted from Bangladesh in this year's edition of the international competition.
Representatives from 125 projects participated in the 48-hour hackathon, and the best 27 projects were nominated by NASA from Bangladesh.